


la belle epoque

by fannyatrollop



Category: RuPaul's Drag Race RPF
Genre: And the ghosts that haunt them, Bad Remake of Korean Drama, Communication Issues, Dumb Roommate Fights, Girls who love but don't always like each other, Housemates AU, I'm not entirely sure what I'm doing, Intentional/Unintentional Bitchitude, Multi, No actual ghosts (Casper's not making an appearance guys), Parental Abuse/Neglect, Sex Work, Unresolved Trauma, cis girl au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-08
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-03-28 10:46:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 32,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13902420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fannyatrollop/pseuds/fannyatrollop
Summary: The story of five (5) girls, living in one (single bathroom) house, with lots of unresolved issues, and the glory of being in their twenties.





	1. brave new girl

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, welcome! 
> 
> This is basically an adaptation of the Kdrama Age of Youth/Hello My Twenties. I'm writing by the seat of my pants, but will be following/adapting a lot of the plot points of the first few episodes. I never finished this drama so who knows where it'll go after. Hopefully not into the sewers to die.
> 
> Thanks to [artificiallale](https://archiveofourown.org/users/artificiallale) (especially for editing), [vrginsacrifice](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vrginsacrifice) (especially for letting me yell about nonsense), and to my long suffering friends, for being Patient Zero to my nonsense.

Trixie can say, with full certainty, that this will be the nicest house she’s ever lived in. She was in a bit of a rush to secure housing, and part of her had feared that it was too good to be true. It’s nice to confirm, with her own eyes, that the house is real, and that she won’t have to make a home on a park bench somewhere because of her own stupidity.

Her new landlady is fifteen minutes late. Trixie isn’t sure if it’s nature, the hair, or the heels she teeters on that makes her tower so far over her. She looks like she would be at home holding court at a gala in the middle of Manhattan, or somewhere on the streets of Paris. Trixie has never been to either of those places, but she imagines it to be so. She is, in many ways, too large a presence for the quaint residential street they’re on.

Trixie wants to will herself into feeling comfortable. The landlady is bright all over, chattering about how punctual Trixie is, gesturing at the flowers she had lovingly hired someone to tend to. She had planted them, but gosh, her life was far too busy to really grow them all on her own.

She laughs, or rather cackles, at Trixie’s attempt to call her _ma’am_ : “Just call me Ru.”

She laughs at almost everything.

They ring the doorbell, in case the other girls are home. Trixie’s been given her key, one of the first things Ru did upon meeting in person, but giving the others a warning before barging in seemed like the polite thing to do.

She has yet to hear a single thing about her new housemates, apart from the acknowledgment that they exist. She had been asked if it would be alright to pass her contact information to them before moving in, but she’d forgotten to approve what would probably have been a solid idea in the self-made chaos of uprooting herself. The sound of footsteps padding at top speed in her direction alerts Trixie that she will be meeting one of them shortly.

She experiences one harrowing month in the span of a second, once again, entirely out of panic. But she’s good at keeping her composure, always has been.

The door opens, and Trixie starts to wonder if every woman she meets in the city will look like they stepped out of the pages of _Vogue_ . She didn’t think Boston would be that kind of town.

Ru shuffles her into her housemate’s custody as soon as she can. She has a lot to do, but is always a shout away.

“She really is,” chirps her housemate. “Or, well, it might take a day or so but if she can’t come someone else will. Can I take one of your bags? Your hair is amazing…”

***

Her name is Melissa, but she answers to Miss Fame more often than not. Fame for short. Some people still call her Missy, but Trixie can just go with the one she likes best. Trixie does her best to process the information coming at her in spite of the fact that Fame talks faster than anyone she has ever met.

Miss Fame is her identity on Instagram, a platform on which she is extremely popular. (“It’s a great place to be for a modern makeup artist!”) Trixie has barely been living in the city for two hours and she has already met someone who both has and is concerned about maintaining a brand. She takes her duffel, and her hand, leads her to the bedroom she will share with another girl, Pearl. A girl named Violet is the only one with a single, but Fame is experiencing life as she does for the time being since her bunkmate is away.

Trixie learns the following things about the other girls:

They’re all students, though not all at the same school. Fame studies cosmetology, Pearl is in business administration, probably. Fame’s absent bunkmate, a girl named Katya, is supplementing her education with a lifelong commitment to gymnastics. She’s doing some sort of special training session out of country, apparently. Fame doesn’t really have a lot of details, which is unusual since they do speak and get along rather well, but she figures she’ll turn up soon enough. She must have to concentrate. She’s Very Good at what she does, they should sit down and watch some of her routines on Youtube sometime. Maybe tonight!

Both Pearl and Katya will be attending Boston U, so Trixie can count her lucky stars at having ready-made friends.

Violet… Well, she is apparently a college student, though she is never seen studying and no one knows what her major is, or what she might have in mind for one. She likes fashion and owns a sewing machine, so Fame’s educated guess is that she’s involved in that somehow. She looks like a model and wears as little clothing as she can around the house. It’s just how she is, you get used to it.

She’s really not that bad.

Pearl is also pretty nice. She’s very busy, but she’s not that hard to live with. Really.

Trixie will love Katya. Everyone does.

All of this is conveyed before they reach the room.

Fame wants to take a selfie with her, but only if Trixie wants. She doesn’t want her to be uncomfortable. Trixie is already uncomfortable, but she accepts. Fame squeals delightedly at how it turns out.

If Trixie wasn’t tired, she would try to match Fame’s excitement. She’s much friendlier than her appearance would lead one to believe, and she seems excited about taking Trixie out and showing her all the best places nearby. She makes a point to show her where her things go, even though it’s not unclear to begin with, and is just starting to ask Trixie about herself when she gets a text. Trixie notes that she’s set her phone to light up when that happens. She also has one of those cases with strips of light on the sides.

“Ah! I know I just said I’d show you that bakery but I actually have to get going. Maybe we can have dinner, yeah?”

Trixie nods. “Sure.”

Fame kisses her on the cheek before flouncing off. It takes Trixie a minute to recover.

She spends the rest of the afternoon making a mess of her things. Though she opens her luggage with the full intention of emptying it and organizing her space, she only manages to make her bed and curl up.

When she wakes up, it’s completely dark. She checks the time on her phone; it’s 2AM. She didn’t think the jet lag would be that bad coming from Wisconsin, but she is someone who has never crossed a state line before, let alone a time zone. Maybe travel is inherently exhausting. Maybe she was built to stay home and is defying God’s plan for her life, not that she’s been too concerned with incurring His wrath since she was very small.

She fishes some pajamas out of her bag, giving up on getting settled until morning.

She wakes up to a Post-It note bearing a hastily scrawled message: _please move your stuff, at least. hard to get by in the dark_ .

***  
  
Violet ducks into the bathroom while Trixie is brushing her teeth the next day.

“Hope you don’t mind, the mirror doesn’t give you much of a view anyway.”

Trixie makes the mistake of looking at her before reacting to what is about to happen. It leaves her thoroughly intimidated. Violet is incredibly beautiful; just as Fame said, she really does look like a model. But it’s a cold beauty. The smile she gives her is small and tight, and Trixie thinks she can be forgiven for thinking there’s not much behind it.

“I’ll only be a while,” she says.

“Why they rent a house with one bathroom to five girls is a fucking mystery, there’s really not much I can do.”

Trixie collects her jaw from the floor, shuts her mouth, and focuses on getting her teeth clean. She shuts her eyes too, and tries to shut her ears. Later, she’ll wonder why she didn’t just kick her out.

“I’m Violet,” says Violet, as Trixie spits into the sink. “You’re… Tracy?”

“Trixie,” she says, curtly, ducking out of any further interaction.

Violet doesn’t seek her out.

Trixie spends the rest of her day clearing her things. If it wasn’t for the note, now crumpled up in the wastebin, she would start to wonder if Pearl is a fictional character rather than the girl she shares her bedroom with. She hears chatter from outside her door, but she’s got work to do where she is.

***

There was no way she would be leaving home without at least a vague idea of what she wanted to do with her life, no question whatsoever of at least coming up with some kind of end goal. Trixie may have Mattel as a last name, but there is no relation to the multimillion dollar company. She couldn’t afford a free-floating leaf in the wind approach to college planning. So she went with what was in her heart, then realised devoting her life to music might put her on a bus back home the second she was done accumulating debt at one of the nation’s great institutions of higher learning. Besides, she probably doesn’t even have the talent to enroll in a music program. _Life is about being realistic_ , she told herself.

In the end, she was no less naive in her choice, but perhaps a notch less fanciful. She will while away her life as a school counselor, trying to spot smaller versions of herself and guide them out of misery. It’s insane, but she couldn’t come up with a better idea.

She spends the days leading up to her first class in a state of quiet panic, already asking herself if she’s starting off on the wrong foot. For all she knows, she is a person with no discernible talent and is doomed to fail at whatever she chose. She sits in that while settling her possessions into the house, finding all the spaces set aside for her use and filling them. She doesn’t quite have enough to do this just yet, but soon there’s a place for the things she does have.

There’s a small envelope full of pictures in one of her desk drawers, pictures of a heavier girl with auburn hair styled into a subtle bouffant. They seem to be keepsakes from a theatre production, most likely _Hairspray_. Not all of them match up, though, so it’s probably an account of various productions.

She leaves them where they are, even though their owner is probably missing them, somewhere out there. Trixie wonders what made the girl leave, freeing up all this space she can’t seem to occupy well enough.

***

She makes little progress with the other girls.

A week goes by, and she is only able to identify her bunkmate by her grunts of irritation when she switched on a light at around 8AM one day, the faint sound of their bedroom door opening and closing if she starts awake in the twilight hours, and one more note expressing annoyance at some little thing Trixie had done. She hasn’t taken the time to introduce herself, and doesn’t seem to spend any time at home.

She thinks she saw her one morning, and it was but a brief glimpse. She caught sight of a tall, blonde girl lacing up her boots on her first Saturday morning, but she had left before Trixie got to say hello.

What grinds her gears is how she has apparently managed to become a bother to a girl she can’t honestly say she even knows.

She managed to find most of the places Fame told her about on her own. She chatted with Fame one evening about how on point her recommendations were, but Fame has a tendency to be needed somewhere else at just the right time to avoid spending too much time with Trixie. There wasn’t much time to bond.

She wonders what it might feel like to be so liked, to be such an important person that her presence is so actively sought after. Although, for the most part, Fame is just ready to bounce in any direction her likely perfect boyfriend asks. Or, that’s what Trixie has observed. It’s only natural that a perfect girl have a perfect boy to be so perfect for, along with a great and largely anonymous audience. Fame is starring in her very own romantic comedy, while Trixie just lives in it.

Trixie isn’t jealous. She’s _bitter_ , maybe, but not jealous.

One morning, she’s doing her first load of laundry when Fame comes in with a bundle of her own.

“Do you mind if I put mine in too?” she asks, somewhat out of breath, as if she exerted herself almost to her limit just so she could get there in time to combine their laundry.

“I hate to do this but I slept a little longer than I should have and just don’t have the time to get ready anymore! And I’ve been going to so many places I’ve just burned through almost my entire wardrobe. It’s so funny how that happens! But well, it doesn’t look like you have a lot, so could I? Just this once?”

Trixie bites her lip and nods. Fame has been the kindest to her out of the girls, it’s only fair to be kind back.

Later that day, Violet stomps into their living room, where Fame is transfixed by something on her phone. Trixie is transfixed by the receipt that shows just how much she spent on books for her first semester, wondering how she won’t waste away into a mass of bones just in time to collect her degree.

“Did someone put this in the dryer?”

In her hand is the carcass of a sequined top.

Trixie turns sheet white. She was the only one who had used the machines that day, and had carelessly tossed the lump of clothes she was in charge of into the dryer. She should have paid attention, she made a rookie mistake and now her most intimidating roommate is out for blood because her idiot self didn’t realize she was washing something delicate.

Fame glances between Trixie, and the sad piece of cloth in Violet’s hand. “It must have gotten mixed up with our stuff.”

“Your stuff? Why would something of mine be among your stuff in the first place, _Melissa_ ?”

Trixie flinches, bites her lip. Fame is about as guilty as she is, but with sudden noble feeling, she decides to share in Violet’s wrath.

“I put it in,” she says, while a saner version of herself screams. “Fame… Didn’t ruin it. I washed both our loads.”

Violet’s gaze rips a clean hole right through her.

“Okay, Tracy, fuck you for not knowing how to do laundry,” she says, as if cussing Trixie out is a mere afterthought. “But how the fuck was this even being washed with your stuff?”

She turns back to Fame.

“You borrowed it, didn’t you? If I can call it that when I don’t remember being _asked_ .”

Fame looks properly guilty, but indignant.

“As if you don’t help yourself to my clothes when you want! And you don’t bother washing them!”

“Oh, and you leaving something you took from me in Tracy’s incompetent hands is much better? No offense, Tracy.”

“Tracy” gathers up her books, retreats to the safety and solitude of her room. Outside, the battle rages on.

She nearly jumps as a lump of sheets on the top bunk shifts. Then there’s a sigh.

“Don’t worry about it. But don’t get involved next time.”

It’s the first time she’s heard Pearl speak.

By the next morning, Fame and Violet, arms around each other’s shoulders, are mugging for Fame’s iPhone camera while doing face masks.

***

Her grandpa’s hand-me-down guitar arrives the day before classes start, having survived the ravages of the U.S. postal system by some miracle. Trixie calms herself by playing little nonsense melodies in the backyard. The sun is shining, so she takes advantage of the opportunity to play outdoors under its warmth.

She splurges on the supplies and ingredients she needs to bake an apple pie. And some ice cream. Ice cream is essential for nerves. She vows to think about part time work soon.

It’s a nice day. She lets Fame and Violet share her pie, gives them each one slice and lets Fame take a second. She takes a picture of it, after artfully taking a piece off near the tip. There’s still about half left to comfort her after class the next day.

She doesn’t dress to impress on her first day. When she was young, her grandma would make her frilly confections to wear, and do her hair up in ribbons. Part of her wants her wardrobe to be as pink and frilly as it was back then. One day, though, she had listened when she was told she couldn’t dress like a child anymore. She lost something vital that day, she thinks, on days where she feels especially sorry for herself.

She thinks a lot about what she wishes she could look like. The person trapped in her body is so much larger, more striking than what she shows the world. Even with the wide hips and huge belly her mother always liked poking at her over. It’s sad, but as they spend so much of their time together in tense silence she almost welcomes the swipes at her body.

Real, boring Trixie ties her hair back in an attempt to make it behave, puts on a pastel hoodie, and jeans that are hanging on by the grace of God, but comfortable.

Most of her courses are concentrated on Tuesdays and Thursdays, with one incomprehensibly slotted in on Wednesday with a half hour discussion session on Friday. She gets to start college on the day she only has one course to show up for: Introduction to Psychology, part one.

She walks to the bus stop with Fame, where they catch different busses. Fame suggests she look out for Pearl if she’s lonely on campus, for the second time. Trixie gives her a tight smile, but thanks her nonetheless.

She finds her classroom with little incident, some of the sweetness of the day before lingering in the form of good luck. Sure, she was jostled this way and that on the crowded bus, and had a hell of a time pushing herself out when the time came, but she wants to stretch any nice feelings she has as long as they can go.

It feels good to open up a fresh notebook, bright pink to match her soul. She’d been out of school, working for a year, and well, she did get to experience the small pleasure of cracking open a new notebook every once in a while when she filled up old ones with stupid doodles and songs. But now there’s a sense of purpose to it.

“Is this seat taken?”

She raises her head, is met with an awe-inspiring sight.

The girl has hair like lavender cotton candy, an outfit to match it, and a face that suggests her dearest wish is to force-enter one of those Japanese cartoons that briefly had airplay when she was young. Trixie nods, wordlessly communicates her approval to take the seat. The girl says a quick thank you and sits down. One of her first priorities is to take at least five packaged sweet buns out of her bag and line them up in a row, then set her stationary and cartoon rabbit themed pen next to them.

Trixie doesn’t know if she wants to be her friend, if she wants to _be_ her, or if this is one of those moments where she looks at a girl and briefly wonders what it would be like to run her hands over her bare skin. She rules out the third option. They sit together in silence, glancing awkwardly at one another every once in a while, until class is over. The girl says goodbye before she leaves.

***

When Trixie gets home, she finds that her housemates have left her only one slice of pie to enjoy. She wants to scream at them, but it’s not like she said they couldn’t take any more, even though she might have wanted to say that. She doesn’t know why she feels like she needs to fill herself up with sugar. She enjoys her last slice of pie.

She’s desperately lonely. She thinks she’s leapt from the frying pan into the fire. Then she remembers how badly she had wanted to leave home, and sternly tells herself to be grateful for the changes in her life. Then she feels so homesick she could cry.

Pearl doesn’t get home until around 4AM most nights, so she uses the time to cry for her mother, but mostly for herself. This becomes part of her nightly routine. She tries to be quiet about it.

***

“Can you shut up?”

Trixie has to agree with the sentiment, but there’s a hint of fondness in Violet’s voice.  
Fame points directly at Violet and keeps singing, adding more oomph into the performance. It’s unbearably bad, in a way that might actually be on purpose.

Trixie has a headache, concentrated around her eyes. She wishes Fame could be a little less happy to be waking up in the morning. She could be kinder about it if she didn’t still feel like a barely tolerated guest in her new home. It’s only September, but she thinks she’s coming down with something.

She finds another note on her desk as she packs up for class.

 _1-800-56-TALK_ _  
_

_call this number when you’re sad_ _  
_

She leaves it there. The bus will leave without her if she spends too much time feeling outraged.

Who does this girl think she is?

She indulges, for a moment, in hating her housemates. If Pearl wanted to, she could very well talk to her. It’s not like they sleep in the same goddamn room or anything. It’s ridiculous, but Trixie wishes she would at least introduce herself, even if she already knows her name. She’s not fully sure Pearl knows hers, and she hates her for that.

She hates Violet, too, for not bothering to remember her name, as if it was that difficult, and not even attempting to hide it. For always looking so above it all, when the only difference between her and everyone else in the house is that she has the luxury of a single room. For the fact that Trixie perceives her as an impenetrable wall of ice.

As for Fame, she hates her because it’s difficult to hate someone who makes every effort to seem kind, but has kept next to no promises in the short span of time they’ve known each other. At least the other girls don’t act like they care about her.

If that Katya girl were around, she’s sure she’d hate her too. She has seen pictures of a girl who might be her on Fame’s Instagram the few times she scrolled through it, before her insides started to burn a little. She seems a bit manic, but has a nice smile. It’s stupid.

She feels ridiculous. Especially when Fame taps her on the shoulder on their walk to the bus, looking concerned.

“Is everything okay?”

Trixie doesn’t say it, but apparently her face is enough. Soon, she is inundated with questions about the source of her troubles, and the promise of coffee. Fame texts her an address and a time, hugs her before getting on her bus.

The universe seems to have softened in response to Trixie’s rush of hate. Even Kim, the anime girl who has become her regular Intro to Psych seat buddy, seems a little concerned when they exchange their usual greetings.

***

Trixie finally cracks at around 4:05PM, while her overly sugared-up coffee cools. She had been waiting for a little over an hour. She doesn’t even finish the coffee. She can hear the sound of rain, a rising beat signaling a need to get home quick. She feels nauseous.

She has to say something. Even if it’s difficult, she just has to. The adult inside of her advises communication, that she should stand up for herself, demand the respect she deserves from her housemates.

Trixie thinks she should just move.

She knows she has to when she’s met with the sound of Violet’s voice, welcoming her home in its own unique way.

“Does she ever just, like, stare at you? Like just stand there looking at you like she wants to start shit? But she never does and like, I’m perfectly capable of defending myself, but if someone has a problem with me it’s just not worth my time to drag it out myself.”

“She cries a lot at night.”

“Pearl! You never told me that, oh my God…”

“Not my place, Fame.”

“I really want to do her makeup, dress her up or something. She has such pretty hair.”

“It’s wasted on her.”

“Violet, please. Anyway, it’s not really nice to talk about someone behind their back like this. I’m so sure I forgot something important, it’s driving me crazy…”

“Please don’t say it was a condom.”

“Violet, I’m going to kill you one of these days… Trixie usually comes home earlier than this… Oh, _shit_ .”

The sound of her ringtone, of the courtesy call Fame should have made an hour ago, is all Trixie can focus on. She lets it ring. She’s not so much glaring at the girls, who hadn’t even noticed her standing there while talking about her, as they are occupying her line of vision.

Fame cancels the call, springing to her feet.

“Trixie! I am so, so, sorry I am such a—“

“Please, just stop.”

Fame stops.

Trixie is drunk on righteous fury, it burns clean through her, and she rides the wave while she has her audience sat down in front of her. They were having cocoa and talking mad shit about her, all cozy. She can’t fucking stand them.

“It would have been less fucked up of you,” she says, feeling herself start to tremble. “To just tell me what a big fucking joke you thought I was before acting all nice and like you gave a damn about me.”

She cuts Fame off when she starts trying to soothe her, trying to be so nice that Trixie might forget her lack of genuine feelings.

“You’re all cunts, but you … Miss Fame, Melissa, whatever the fuck you want to be called, you are the fucking worst!”

Fame looks stricken.

“Trixie, I really didn’t mean to hurt you, I just…”

“You just what? Didn’t care? I have never felt as alone as I have since I moved here! If you want me to leave, I’ll… I’ll find somewhere else to go, but don’t you try to be nice to me anymore!”

She can feel herself start to cry. She thinks Fame is close to tears as well.

“Are you finished?”

Violet has raised one perfect brow, and is regarding her with a spark in her eyes that betrays her feathers having been ruffled, despite her otherwise excellent composure.

 _Bitch_ .

“By all means, come at me if you’re not. You’ve already gone after the nicest person in the room. And you won’t get much out of this one,” Violet gestures to Pearl, who may as well be made of stone. “So come on. What do you have to say to me?”

Trixie blinks, narrows her eyes.

“You…” She begins. She’s disappointed in herself, in how if it had been any other time, she could have told Violet exactly what was on her mind.

 _You’re a bitch. You look down on me. You keep barging into the bathroom when I’m there and I don’t like that. You probably took more helpings of my pie without asking._ _  
_

She turns tail, retreats to her room where she can cry. She’s too exhausted to keep fighting. It feels too hot in her head.

***

She must have cried herself to sleep. She dimly remembers burning up, a hand on her forehead, faint voices...

“Is she okay?”

“Don’t know, she was like this when I went in.”

“Should we call an ambulance? Think she’s got insurance?”

“Oh God, what if she _dies_ ?”

“There should be something in the kitchen…”

Now she’s waking up in damp sheets, feeling like she’s been through the ringer and then some.

“If this really is all our fault, let me tell you, I’m feeling really sorry right now. How did it get up _there_ ?”

Violet’s whining confirms that she isn’t dead yet.

Trixie groans, stretches, and pads over to her door, peeks out.

The girls have, apparently, spent the morning cleaning. Fame even has an outfit that seems to be specifically for cleaning days, while Violet’s long legs are in full display under an oversized t-shirt. Pearl is there too, surprisingly. Trixie assumed she might have somewhere else to be at this time.

“That’s just a weird stain, I think it’s been there for a while. Probably from Katya’s wild days. Right, Pearl?”

Pearl shrugs at Fame’s question.

 _She really doesn’t say much_ …

As Trixie becomes more alert, she remembers more details about the night before, about her little outburst. She wants to crawl back into her covers, remain there for the rest of her life. But the more she thinks about it, for all their sins, not bringing things up with her housemates hasn’t solved a single thing, and hiding from them will never put things right.

Besides, she can’t afford the hassle of moving.

So she steps out. Three pairs of eyes fix on her, their owners stopping whatever they were doing to watch her, cautiously.

Fame breaks the silence.

“Hey! How are you feeling?” she asks, maintaining her distance.

She doesn’t give Trixie time to respond. “Listen, I just want to say that I’m so sorry for the way we treated you. We should have made you feel more welcome, and I know you hate us but… You really don’t… Have to move.”

Her voice had gotten progressively softer as she spoke, and Trixie waits a little, in case she’s got more to say.

“Still, you were a real bitch to us last night. Didn’t know you had it in you,” Violet cuts in, and Trixie thinks she sounds more gentle than she’s ever heard her.

Trixie bites her lip.

“I’m sorry for yelling,” she says. “And… For whatever happened after.”

She is then told, with numerous complaints from Violet about how messy it all was, that whatever she had been coming down with showed its claws late last night. The girls did their best to nurse her back to health, including (and Violet made it very clear she expects payment for this, hopefully in the form of more pie) holding her hair back while she vomited up what may just have been all the toxic feelings she’d been holding on to. She hadn’t exactly eaten much the day before.

They had been cleaning up the mess she’d made, but if she doesn’t go straight back to bed and get more rest, Fame promises she will be punished.

They will go over their issues later. Pearl has some time in the evening, but not a lot (apparently, her bunkmate is a part-time DJ), and Violet will make sure Fame graces them with her presence, remarking that.

“She fell in love and now we’re all chopped liver to her.”

Trixie can’t help but chuckle a bit at Fame’s shocked expression, apparently unaware of her flakiness until now.

***

They don’t become the best of friends or anything, but Trixie’s existence does become more tolerable.

After their talk, she learns the following things about her housemates, excluding the mysterious Katya:

Pearl is juggling at least three jobs, on top of her schoolwork. She usually scribbled her notes when she had a moment in the middle of her day. The help line she told Trixie about had helped her a lot in the past. She’s got a sleepy vibe to her, but Trixie is starting to realize there might be a good reason for that. If Trixie wants, she can drop her a text and they can have lunch on campus someday, but only if their schedules work out. She never judged Trixie for crying so much.

Violet doesn’t think of how she comes across, and has been known to act without considering the people around her. It comes as a shock to her that she comes across as such a bitch, but judging by input from the others they’ve needled her about it enough that she really should start making more of an effort. She wonders if Trixie is constipated or something. Fame can’t take a shit without being on her phone, but she doesn’t know what excuse Trixie has. (Mostly animal videos, and elaborate prom proposals.) She had assumed Trixie was just some weird shut in. Violet won’t hold back if she has something to say, at least not anymore, so Trixie should do the same. She’ll have to get used to her.

Fame really is a sweetheart, and Trixie is sorry for the things she said to her. She has been flaky recently, and she will work on that. She will die if Trixie doesn’t let her dress her up like a doll, and Trixie will hold her to that offer. Fame says she can yell at her again if it doesn’t happen soon. She’s a bit of a ditz.

Trixie thinks she should have cut them a little more slack. Well, mostly Pearl and Fame.

On their next day in class together, Kim surprises her with some herbal medicine her mother forces her to drink when she’s sick. She can’t guarantee it works, and it’s disgusting, but she wanted to give her something.

“You looked like shit last class.”

She offers her one of her sweet buns, too.

***

Trixie stays out a little later one day, studying with Kim for their first quiz. She learns a lot, mostly about where Kim gets her clothes (most are homemade, which is honestly impressive), how she does her makeup, and that Kim is such a big fan of Fame that she almost ends their budding friendship because Trixie never said she _lived_ with her.

She absolutely needs to revise later, but she gets home in good spirits.

She only gets one foot in the door when she notices the atmosphere has changed significantly. There’s laughter coming from the kitchen, and a voice she hasn’t heard before.

 _Katya_ .

Bravery has become her policy, so she doesn’t hesitate to stride in, a she has no reason to fear her last housemate.

Katya has the brightest teeth she has seen on another human being, and her smile hits Trixie like a freight train. She knew it was beautiful from pictures, but they didn’t do it justice, she knows that as soon as she’s faced with the real deal. She squeals the moment she notices her, and Trixie’s heart flutters a little.

“Ah! You must be the new girl! You come, you hug me now!”

Trixie has to obey. Katya loosens her grip rather quickly, but is apparently content to let Trixie stay in her arms indefinitely. She had almost squeezed the air out of her lungs, which must be why she feels a little lightheaded.

“These guys told me about how they bullied you. I’m so sorry, I had important work, real personal growth shit. But I won’t leave you alone with them again.”

“We did not bully her,” mutters Violet.

“They did,” says Trixie, feeling safer and warmer than she has in years. “I nearly died.”

“We’ll have to punish them,” says Katya, as gravely as she can while stifling a laugh.

By the time Pearl arrives, a little after midnight, Trixie thinks it might not be an exaggeration to say she’s in love.

They already had a couple of beers, and Trixie surprised them all by knocking hers back like a pro. Irresponsible relatives started her drinking young, it’s a miracle she doesn’t have an addiction.

Katya does not partake. Pearl sets a slushie on the table where Katya is sitting, and she gives her a look of pure gratitude, and a smile like the sun. Trixie loves how Katya seems to feel everything so _much_ .

Pearl brought more drinks for the others, says she got them from her gas station job. Her apron string is peeking out of her bag, where she must have stuffed it after clocking out.

Violet and Fame stop arguing about the point of having relationships to bring Pearl into the fold. Violet had shamelessly revealed she’s not shy about dating men strictly to suit her needs, and how she probably would give them up entirely if she could have her way; Fame believes in true love, loyalty. Pearl quietly drinks her beer.

Katya has moved behind Violet as a support, since Violet has a habit of kicking her legs furiously when she laughs for real, and they only have backless stools to sit on. She’s the source of most of the evening’s humour, but Trixie manages to land a few jokes too.

It’s nice, really, truly, nice. Trixie couldn’t have seen herself sitting with her housemates, drinking and joking and sharing secrets, just a week ago. When she was alone in her bedroom, back in Wisconsin, with the ghosts of her past hanging thick in the air, she had dreamt of something like this, of the tears in her eyes being from laughter.

They want to tell ghost stories, but no one really knows any, and Fame is very much against bringing anything scary into the house.

“I won’t be able to sleep! It’ll be bad for my face,” she wails. Violet offers to rock her to sleep if it’ll help, leading to Pearl, of all people, landing a dig: “Won’t help much if she wakes up to your face.”

“You guys don’t even have any to tell,” says Fame.

“I have something,” offers Katya, with sparkling eyes.

The girls, barring a whining Fame, turn their attention to her.

“It’s not really a story but… Ever since I came to this house I’ve had a feeling. A feeling that we are not alone. That one of us brought a spirit with us…”

“Shit. Bet that was me,” says Violet, stopping Katya in her tracks.

Pearl nods slowly. “I’ve got one too. Or well, there’s someone I wish would just die.”

“You guys are going to kill me!” yells Fame, tearing up a bit.

Katya looks a little taken aback, but she pushes out a laugh. “I was gonna say it was the ghost of my pussy, long dead from malnutrition, but I guess you’re all murderers or something.”

Trixie knows it’s impossible, since she was the last to arrive. But she wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out to be hers, waiting all this time for her arrival.

After all, she was responsible for a death once upon a time. That makes you a strong candidate for a haunting, right?


	2. almost famous

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was made possible in part by [vrginsacrifice](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vrginsacrifice) for the goat sacrifice, and [silvervelour](https://archiveofourown.org/users/silvervelour) for all the cheerleading. And, of course, readers like you. Thank you.
> 
> I'm a little nervous about this character, but hellooooo POV change!

It was just a stupid joke. She should bloody well _know_ that, having shared sleeping quarters with Katya for a year and a half, but Miss Fame is still spooked. Ghosts do _not_ exist, and Katya’s sense of humour has always been offbeat, to say the least, so she probably wasn’t even serious.

She still finds herself looking this way and that at odd moments, when she’s just trying to relax at home, wondering if there’s something she can’t sense hanging in the air. Something _watching_ her.

She wants to call Aaron, ask if he’ll let her sleep over, but he can get huffy if she catches him at a bad time. He’s also a bit too logical to entertain the idea that she could be scared of ghosts at her age. She loves him, so she wants to set him up for success, and if he approaches the issue the way she’s sure he will, they will probably just fight.

“What do you think it looks like?” she asks Katya, one morning when she’s preparing her face for an average Sunday and Katya is still laid out in bed. Fame knows she’s awake, she’s conditioned to be an early riser, but she likes to treat herself to laziness every now and then.

“What are you talking about, Missy Fame?”

“The ghost,” she says, admiring her face for a second. She invests so much time in it, she might as well look at the fruits of her labour with pride.

There was once a time when she couldn’t look in a mirror at all.

“My pussy ghost?” Katya says, her head poking out from underneath her covers. How she can hear under there is beyond Fame’s comprehension, but they’ve had many conversations like this throughout their time together. “I think it would have a vaginal quality to it. And very yellow teeth, like mine.”

Fame shudders at the imagery.

“You’re disgusting,” she says, with plenty of love in her heart. Katya sticks her tongue out at her through her lovely, white teeth.

“But like, if it was just a regular ghost. What do you think it might look like?”

Katya takes some time to think.

“Darling Missa,” she says. “Maybe one of my ancestors was a one-eyed witch in Siberia with a pet tiger named Mishka, or something. She might be able to tell you. But I’m afraid those talents passed me over. Which is a shame, I have many questions for the spirits of the great beyond.”

Fame debates asking, but though she can be a little off putting at her worst, Katya is really funny. There’s hope that whatever she says might actually put her at ease.

“Like what?”

“Like where I can find some tender, willing pussy to keep me warm at night,” says Katya, fully seated on her bed in a bundle of blankets. “I’m so cold. So cold, and so lonely.”

She’s smiling rather big for such a lonesome soul, but it makes Fame laugh and forget about her uneasy feelings.

“Are you okay to start training again? You know, after all of _that_ ,” asks Fame. She hasn’t really taken the time to ask, but it’s been weighing on her a little since Katya’s return.

Katya gives her two thumbs up. “Coach isn’t giving up on me just yet.”

“Good,” says Fame, turning back to the mirror, holding up a hair clip she impulsively bought to see if it would look alright. She’s such a fool sometimes, it would have been more logical to do this at the store. “You’re too good to be given up on.”

Katya only laughs at that.

***

Fame couldn’t be happier with her living situation. There isn’t a girl she truly hates in the house. She’s only afraid of her attempts to be a good person failing, of becoming the girl Trixie had said she was that horrible night, when she forgot their coffee date.

Katya has been looking out for Trixie better than Fame ever did. The two clicked instantly, and can often be found laughing at videos together on the couch, or engaging in comfortable banter, sometimes providing running commentary on the goings on in the house. Katya has always liked playing this game where she will narrate the other girls’ movements while all her subject wants is to drink a cup of tea in her kitchen, or fret about her appearance before an important date. She has found a suitable partner in Trixie.

“Isn’t that the most beautiful woman you’ve ever seen, Brenda?”

“Oh, honey, it sure is. Bet she’s about to meet a dashing prince who is also, like, one of those wiggly guys from car lots.”

“Must be an excellent dancer. I’m so wet.”

“Already? You sure you don’t need a diaper? I love you for your incontinence, but...”

“Shut up, Brenda,” says Katya, somehow, in between bouts of wheezing laughter. “Your husband has a piss kink.”

“And I love you for indulging it while I do what all classy rich white ladies do,” replies Trixie. “Meaning I’m fucking the ambiguously brown pool boy.”

“If Katya and Trixie are available, could they please give me an honest opinion about this outfit?” Fame says. “Really sorry to cut in when it was getting so interesting but I’m just going mad because I want to wear this necklace but I feel like it’s either the necklace or the dress. I really want to wear this necklace because he got it for our one month anniversary, but I don’t think _any_ of this is working.”

“Isn’t that the one from _Icing_?”

Violet hates Aaron, and Fame wonders how that happened when she hasn’t spent much time with him. Actually, she probably hasn’t even met him, but she insists on making cutting comments about him whenever she can.

She strolls into the kitchen, and the conversation, with the bearing of a queen, even though she’s only got a towel covering her torso, and another to wrap up her hair.

Fame can feel her face tighten on its own volition, annoyance rising.

“Why does it matter where he got it? I love it. Just because he doesn’t give me expensive things doesn’t mean he’s not thoughtful.”

“He left the tag on, and if I recall correctly, you saved up for a watch with a real leather strap,” says Violet. “I’m just saying, he needs to step it up. Especially with how much thought and effort _you_ put into making him happy.”

Fame never knows what to do with Violet’s comments when they get like this. She’s sensitive to the concern, but… Violet is not the kind of girl who gets _concerned_ about others, is she? Violet moves through the world expecting things to arrange themselves in the way that is most convenient to her, and Fame has to admire the self-assurance it takes to do that. But she can’t believe there isn’t at least a hint of pettiness in her words, that she can _just_ be looking out for her.

There’s no _reason_ for Violet to be concerned about her relationship. She is _happy_. She doesn’t need to be looked out for.

“I always do too much,” she says, as an excuse to herself as well as Violet.

Violet only gives her a pitying glance, goes back to rummaging through the fridge. Hopefully she’s looking for something she put in herself, but she has a tendency to “borrow” things from the others. Never anything Pearl has marked as hers, though.

There’s a short beat, and then Katya seems to decide the coast is clear.

“You look perfect,” she says.

“Yeah,” adds Trixie. “You still need to make me look like that sometime.”

Fame smiles at them gratefully, for being such dears.

***

Fame sometimes wonders if her perception of time is off.

Sometimes, she looks at her phone and sees that hours have gone by in what seems like a second, that maybe she dozed off and forgot she’d offered to help a classmate with one of their projects, or that she said she’d be meeting up with someone. She feels tired lately, more tired than she should with her relatively privileged lifestyle.

If Pearl ever said she was tired, that would make all the sense in the world. Fame doesn’t know how she does it, always on the run, every single day. She used to make sandwiches for her to eat during her lunch breaks, but she asked her to stop after a while.

She thinks she’s waited for Aaron at least fifteen minutes, but maybe she was just early. She gives him fifteen more, and decides to text him then.

_sorry mel!!! will be another half hour. had too many readings, lost track of time. you’re still at home, right?_

She wants to tell him off. He’s only ever on time when it’s spontaneous, when he texts her in the middle of the day asking if she has time. She always makes it even if she doesn’t, but when they set dates, he always takes his time, and she always has to wait. She wants to say he should be more honest about his availability.

She knows Violet wouldn’t stand for this. She would tell him to go fuck himself, that she has better ways to spend her time than waiting on a man.

Pearl would probably cancel out of necessity. With her schedule, she might forget too, though she can’t remember Pearl missing a commitment. Or, well, she can’t remember her even making any other than work and gigs.

Trixie would give him a chance, or two, or three. But if Fame’s experience is correct, she would give him Hell the _moment_ she’s had enough.

She has no idea what Katya would do.

Fame tells him she can wait, finds a cafe to sit at. She takes a cute picture of her latte, but decides against posting it for the time being. She doesn’t care that she’s having coffee on her own. She has someone to wait for, and that’s _enough_. Besides, she manages to pick up a job application for Trixie, noticing that the place is hiring.

It’s not the worst thing that could have happened to her.

He’s at the restaurant right when he said he would be, thirty minutes after she last heard from him.

***

“Oh wow, Mel. I can’t believe you actually got it,” Aaron says, when she gives him his gift.

She beams, flushes with pride.

He’d been eyeing this nice, leather jacket, and Fame committed it to memory so she could surprise him with it on their anniversary. It was expensive, but nothing she couldn’t manage without a little extra effort. She made a budget, gave up some of the frivolous things she spends a staggering amount of her monthly allowance on, and took on some casual jobs doing makeup.

And now he’s grinning back at her, dimples on his cheeks, and she’s full of love.

“You look so handsome!” she says, when he tries it on. It fits perfectly.

“I might let you wear it someday, if you’re cold,” he says, walking over to give her a kiss. “You always loved wearing the old one.”

“Well, I’m glad you like it,” she says.

She looks at him expectantly for a moment. She hopes she won’t have to remind him, because it’s a big anniversary and he must know _why_ they’re out in the first place. It would be weird of her to ask, really.

She gets antsy when he just asks her what she’s thinking of ordering.

They used to have a lot of fun. Her favourite date was at a playground, where they pushed each other on the swings and played like children. Kissed on the slide under the stars. Then, they got hot chocolate at a convenience store, the closest place to get it still open at the time, and walked back to his.

He wouldn’t do that now, but Fame has sweet memories of their time together, and most of them spit in the face of Violet’s insistence that a man’s ability to provide expensive things is what makes him thoughtful.

She keeps that in mind when it’s her turn to receive a gift.

“You didn’t think I’d forgotten, did you?”

She is diplomatic about it, doesn’t say anything about how she had to casually mention what a _special_ day it was to get to that point.

“Of _course_ not,” she says.

He grins, pulls something small, out of his pants pocket. He stretches out his hand for her to take it.

It’s a mood ring.

She’s not sure how to take that.

On one hand, it’s a ring, and she can find the symbolism in it. It’s pretty, too, so she can’t really hate it.

But she also knows there’s a lady who sells little baubles like that near his apartment complex. She bought a ring just like it once, while walking back home after spending the night.

He’s left the little handwritten tag on, pricing the ring at $3.50, but she can’t know for _sure_ if he hastily got it on his way to their date. More importantly, she can’t be _that_ girl.

She slips it on her finger, admires it like it’s the most precious thing in the world. Because it’s what the guy she’s crazy for gave her, and she’s not ungrateful.

***

There’s a strange man loitering in front of the house.

He’d been there the night before. Pearl had mentioned it when Fame saw her briefly the night before, when she couldn’t sleep and Pearl was just getting in. She had warmed up some cocoa for them to share, and Pearl asked if she knew about any guys who might be chasing her.

Fame hadn’t wanted to check for herself, waved it off as someone being lost in the neighbourhood. But she sees him as she rounds the corner home, having said goodbye to Aaron about a block back.

She has no idea who this guy is, and frankly, she’s alarmed.

“Excuse me?” she says, approaching him without intending to show a lick of fear. She has no reason to let him know he makes her nervous, and confidence is powerful. She learned that from Violet.

“Are you lost? Are you trying to visit a friend? If there’s somewhere you need to be, I can try and help you. I know the area pretty well.”

He looks at her like a deer caught in the headlights, awaiting impact.

“This where Violet lives, right? Do you know when she might get in?” he asks, and Fame has to lean in to hear him properly.

It’s a known fact that Violet has her men, that she can procure one whenever she’s in the mood. She’s not serious about dating, but she gets gussied up for evenings out, and the way she carries herself suggests a level of confidence only rivaled by Beyonce. Fame once saw her being dropped off by a man in a ludicrously expensive looking car, watched her lean into the window to talk and kiss him goodbye. She has her fun, but she seldom brings anyone home despite having a private room, says that’s what hotels are for.

That this is the first stray she’s unwittingly brought home is equal parts surprising and unsurprising; if any of them could have some lovelorn man follow her home and wait for her like Romeo at Juliet’s balcony, it would be Violet. But you would think she presents herself as someone so out of the average man’s league that they wouldn’t bother.

Fame makes sure to smile as she responds to the poor fool before her.

“I don’t really know her schedule,” she says. “But maybe call her? It’s a little… Please don’t take this the wrong way, but it’s really weird to just hang around someone’s house.”

“Oh. Sorry,” he has the sense to look sheepish about it.

“Get home safe,” says Fame, leaving him to his business. It’s getting chilly, and she’s not about to catch a cold talking to a strange guy. Especially when he’s stalking one of her housemates.

She takes Violet aside when she sees her, tells her to be careful. Violet is entirely unbothered, but that’s just like her. Fame hopes she’ll listen.

*** 

It’s not a stretch to call Fame a liar. She spends a lot of time carefully burying the underwhelming reality of her face under makeup, curating the moments of her life that will convince the world that she lives a charmed existence, playing the princess. She bleaches her hair, will never post a photograph of herself before senior year of high school, when she started to tolerate the way she looked. If everyone thinks she came into the world as a fully formed beauty, that is fine by her. She can bring herself to love almost anyone she meets, but she can’t seem to do the same for her past self, and she can’t imagine it would be easy for anyone else.

She’s not above the occasional little lie, dropped here and there for protection. She wasn’t completely honest with Trixie about Katya’s reasons for being away, for instance.

People don’t always need or care to know the truth, and really, when Fame chooses to lie it’s not like she’s _hurting_ anyone.

So she wears her new ring, but shuts Violet up by telling her she will be going away for the next weekend, with Aaron. They will go to New York, and it’s only a little disappointing because school is taking off, and she’s already been there a few times with her family.

She has a week to figure out how she’ll pull this off. She’s just glad she stopped featuring her relationship on her Instagram as much as she used to, so she doesn’t need to convince her followers too.

***

It’s Sunday, and the house is mostly empty. Katya’s meeting her coach, Violet’s off doing something or other. Pearl should be working, or taking some time to do her schoolwork. In any case, Fame is left alone with Trixie. She takes it as a perfect opportunity to make up for her past behaviour and get to know her better. She tells Trixie about the coffee shop job, and asks if she has some time to hang out.

Trixie says she had planned to meet a friend later that day, but that she probably wouldn’t mind if Fame joined them. “I’ve been wanting to bring her over for a while,” she says. “I think you’ll like her.”

Fame almost cries a little, envelops her newest housemate in a hug. She tells her she’s so proud that she’s made a friend.

Trixie wrinkles her nose, but bears it gracefully. She’s left in charge of helping her friend find her way to the house, while Fame tidies up the living area, as they’re now expecting company. Fame _loves_ company.

When Fame answers the door, she finds Kim Chi, _the_ Kim Chi, standing on their porch like a stray dog waiting for some scraps and/or scratches. Fame wants to bring her in and make her part of the family. She can’t help but stare.

“Holy shit,” she says, when her brain has fully processed the situation. “It’s such an honour to meet you, I am _such_ a fan! I just think your work is incredible and, wow, I’m so rude, please come in! Do you want anything to drink?”

Kim manages to choke out a soft “me too”, dutifully makes her way in so she can stand frozen at their entrance, like a ravishing porcelain figurine. She doesn’t tell Fame what she can offer her.

Fame can’t really bring herself to hug her. She’s afraid Kim will disappear in a puff of smoke if she touches her, but is sorely tempted to do it anyway. She tells her she’ll be fetching her friend for her soon, scampers off to have some _words_ with Trixie.

“Trixie Mattel!” she screeches, pushing her back into her room just as she emerged.

“Miss Melissa Fame?” replies Trixie. The little minx looks like she’s suppressing a giggle.

“I can’t _believe_ you didn’t tell me you know _Kim Chi_ , or that you’re _friends_ with her, _or_ that you invited _her_ to hang out with us!” Fame fully knows she’s started to talk with her hands, a gift from the trace amounts of Latin blood in her. She threatens to kick Trixie out for not warning her.

Trixie bursts out laughing.

She doesn’t stop, even when Kim pulls her aside after Fame is done with her, to whisper furiously at her about how she thought she’d be meeting the one with the nice smile that Trixie’s supposedly in love with. Trixie’s amusement seems to peter out at that last bit.

Fame files that comment away for future reference.

They sit with snacks Kim brought, so as to not eat them out of house and home. Trixie says she always has something on her, that she usually ends a lecture with a pile of wrappers on the desk in front of her. Kim says that just makes her an ideal person to have around if disaster hits.

Apparently, Trixie and Kim had planned to go shopping that day. Gears turn in Fame’s head. She suggests Kim and her give Trixie a makeover together, like two fairy godmothers.

“Eighty-four whole years later,” drawls Trixie, and Fame takes it as her agreeing, blushes a little at the sass.

“Fairy godmothers are busy people, Trixie. There’s lots of princesses waiting for our help,” says Kim, squeezing Fame’s hand and winking.

They take a photo with Trixie, who makes sure to look as “over it” as possible for dramatic effect. Kim had arrived prepared, with a purple selfie stick that she has decorated with stickers. Fame makes sure to coo over it before they take the picture.

Trixie sits off to the side with a juice box she fished out of the fridge while Kim and Fame talk about how they should go about producing a Cinderella moment within their budget. Trixie had laid down a juice box for each of them, so as not to be the worst hostess ever.

“If we go for a pink Barbie look, it could work really well,” says Kim. “Or even just something cute and girly. Trixie loves that shit. Plus she has the hair.”

Fame regards Trixie as she sucks her juice box dry and raises both eyebrows back at her. Today, she has chosen a powder blue sweater with no real distinctive features, and one of the few nearly indistinguishable pairs of jeans that she has in her collection. She seems to own nothing but baggy t-shirts and hoodies, designed to conceal her shape as much as possible. She ties her hair back, but she can’t hide how thick and golden it is.

If she looks at her face, _really_ looks at her… Trixie’s adorable, with her big brown eyes, plush lips, little button nose. Her eyebrows need a little shaping, but she’s not a bad canvas to work with in the least. If Fame visualizes it, Kim might actually be onto something.

Fame wouldn’t have pegged Trixie for the feminine type, not at first glance. She wants to see what it would look like, and Trixie could have made a fuss at any point in the conversation if she was truly against it. She could hear them, after all.

“Oh, Kim,” she says. “You’re a _genius_.”

***

Kim Chi is a genius.

Despite her supposed bad eyesight she has a hawk’s eye when it comes to finding gold at thrift stores. They have Trixie twirl for their cameras in dresses Kim produces from places Fame wouldn’t have expected them to be.

Trixie pretends she isn’t dying to take them all home, and Fame responds by buying the ones she liked best on the condition that she pay her back when she finds a job. It’s an arrangement Trixie can live with, and Fame is sure she will be able to fulfill her end of the bargain soon enough.

Trixie shies away from anything that would really emphasize her figure. Fame wants to ask her why she takes such pains to hide her body. Trixie has a knockout figure. She’s no runway model, but she’s got this fertility goddess shape to her that would drive anyone mad if she worked with it.

Fame holds her tongue, because deep down she thinks she knows why. She just tells her she’s beautiful and leaves it at that.

It comes together beautifully, and while Fame did most of the work on Trixie’s face, Kim’s artistic direction had her trying things she hadn’t before. Trixie looks a little bit like a blonde Lana Del Rey, with her eyes blown out a bit in Kim’s style. (Fame liked being shown how to do it, but doesn’t think it would work too well with her own sharper features.) The hair clip Fame had agonized over having bought too quickly, a big gauzy flower, turns out to look quite pretty on Trixie. Fame gives it to Trixie, since she never quite warmed up to it.

Trixie can’t stop staring at herself. Fame doesn’t bother telling her not to touch her face, she’s not doing much damage in her opinion and she wants Trixie to just be in the moment she’s in. Watching someone look at themselves like they had no idea they could look like _that_ , like they can’t believe the beauty staring back at them in the mirror is _them_ , is the reason Fame applied for beauty school. She remembers the feeling. She doesn’t feel it as much nowadays, but she remembers.

She sits on her bed with Kim, gets to know her a little. She thought Kim was a fine arts student, but apparently she’s working her way up to law school. “I’m an Asian stereotype,” she says, with a shrug.

“But you post all these beautiful paintings!” says Fame. “And the way you do your makeup is so inspired. You’re such an artist, are you sure you want to be a lawyer?”

“Don’t worry, I’ll dress like this in the courtroom,” Kim deadpans. “Besides, I promised Elle Woods I wouldn’t disappoint her.”

Fame laughs, tells her she’ll never disappoint Elle Woods by being herself.

Katya comes home, beelines straight to their bedroom in post-training exhaustion. She gasps loudly at the sight of a dolled-up Trixie, refusing to take a single thing off while watching videos on Fame’s phone. Katya uses her remaining dregs of energy to fall on a laughing Trixie, cupping her face in wonder.

***

She puts it off for as long as she can. Fame has never regretted a lie more in her life, especially when she thinks of how stupid and unnecessary it was. A quick look at her budget makes an actual trip to New York a little complicated, unless she can call up a friend and crash at theirs. She doesn’t want to bring anyone else into her foolishness, though. Her fingers freeze up when she tries to tell Aaron about it, and when she calls she just talks about her day, about how she’s craving a certain pastry from a certain bakery, but that she understands if he doesn’t have the time to go with her.

The thing is, he’s sensitive. He doesn’t like coming to the house for fear of coming across Violet’s judgmental eyes, something he has spoken to her about at length before. She had tried to comfort him by telling him that he could just avoid her housemates altogether if they made him uncomfortable, and that she certainly didn’t look at him the same way. She sometimes thinks he suspects it still, and if she said she’d planned some stupid weekend trip on the fly because she didn’t want to argue with Violet about something that isn’t even her damn business, it would hurt him.

She should just stop, say their plans fell through and deal with the consequences. It’s highly likely that nothing will happen, her housemates are not monsters. _Violet_ is not a monster. She sticks to her decisions as a rule, though, even if they’re terrible.

It adds a lot of stress she doesn’t need, as she goes through the motions of her everyday life, not coming up with a plan. Beating herself up about it does nothing to help her, but it’s a trap she falls into. She’s mindful of this when she isn’t engaged in her bad habit, but it’s almost impossible to stop herself when she’s already in the thick of it.

Violet’s stalker still hangs around from time to time; sad, lovelorn, and mostly ignored.

Violet seems to snap at some point. Fame is coming home late one night when she catches them arguing, or rather, bears witness to the stalker receiving a Violet Chachki Tongue Lashing. He has a bouquet of pink roses and violets, held out plaintively for a princess unwilling to have him as her prince.

“I’ve already told you I have no interest or need for you,” she says, short and sharp. “Stop embarrassing yourself and go home. Other girls live here, and I’m tired of having to answer for some fucking creep who won’t take a hint.”

“Do you have any idea how special you are?” he says, patiently, and Fame has to wonder if he’s being fed the wrong script for the present interaction. “I can’t stop thinking about you.”

“How is that my problem? You don’t know me,” Violet responds, coolly.

“If you just gave me a chance—”

“I don’t owe you one,” she says flatly, turning to head inside. She locks eyes with Fame for a moment, and Fame feels chastised. In a way, she should. She had no business snooping.

“Try to get over me. And if you call me again, I’ll report you for harassment.”

Violet doesn’t look at Fame on her way in, much less at the guy. She intends to walk right out of his admiration, but one look at him tells Fame it’s unlikely that he’ll give up.

She almost feels for him. There’s no worse feeling than doing your very best, holding your heart out to someone who doesn’t treat it gently. But she can’t say Violet’s wrong.

In the morning, Fame notices the flowers still lying on the front steps.

“You haven’t done anything wrong, to be lying there like that,” she whispers, feeling an immense tenderness towards the abandoned bouquet.

She puts them in water, and sets them on the dining table.

***

Her fake trip is only supposed to be overnight, so she fills up the duffel she uses when she deigns to go to the gym with a change of clothes and bids her housemates goodbye.

Katya gives her a flavoured condom she apparently picked up at a health clinic _just_ for her, wrapped in a twenty dollar bill. “It’s cherry. Isn’t that wild?”

Katya can always be trusted to do that sort of thing. Fame smiles and gives her a kiss on the cheek with her thanks.

Violet tells her to call her if she needs help. She doesn’t know why Violet would think she’d need it, but she smiles tightly and nods, promises she will.

She walks with confidence, and without a hot clue as to where she should go. She sits at her usual bus stop for a while, before she decides to get something to eat and head to the public library.

She thumbs through back issues of Psychology Today, then moves onto books about glamourous icons with tragic life stories. She’s not a big reader, never has been, but she does enjoy herself, thinks she might want to pick up the habit. It dulls her inner voice, a shrill presence that hasn’t stopped reminding her that she’s an idiot, a fool, a complete featherbrain, since she started packing.

The duffel isn’t that heavy, but it feels like a great burden to haul around all day. She misses her bed, where she could sleep and quiet her mind.

***

She calls Aaron after nightfall. She’s at a diner, and the aggressively cheery decor has somehow alerted her to her loneliness. She does like the chicken decals, though.

It’s noisy where he is. Aaron tells her he needs to move outside to hear her properly, and to hold on while he does so. On her end, some classic crooner quietly sings sweet nothings into the air from a jukebox in the corner. It might be Paul Anka.

“What’s going on, Mel?” he says, finally, having left the bustle and noise behind.

“I’m just wondering what you’re doing,” she says. “I missed you.”

“I’m taking a friend out,” he says, and she strains to hear warmth in his voice. “Remember how I told you about that friend who went backpacking in Asia for a year? He’s back. Apparently he’s moving to Australia soon, says he met a girl.”

“Oh, how sweet,” she says.

“Yeah, he’s like that guy from How I Met Your Mother. He’ll probably stay put, he starts planning the wedding on the second date and then it ends as quickly as it started.”

Fame thinks that’s kinda nice.

“There’s nothing wrong with wanting to settle down,” she says.

She can picture him scratching his head like he often does, just by the sound of his voice.

“Yeah, I guess some people might want that,” he says. “What about you? Are you with your friends?”

She hesitates, for so long that he says her name, as if to pull her back down to Earth.

“No, I’m at home,” she lies. “Thinking of taking the girls out, though.”

“Well, have fun,” he says. “I have to get back. Let’s do something next week, yeah?”

_It’s fine._

“Yeah,” she says. “I love you.”

“Love you too, Mel.”

He hangs up.

***

Fame decides she wants a drink too. She has nowhere to go, might as well treat herself to a drink. Or two.

She thinks about how good she has it, all things considered. Once upon a time, she was friendless, unloved by all but her grandparents and their chickens. And her parents, she guesses.

Now, all she has to do is sit and be sweet, and drinks appears in front of her like magic, along with a friendly face. If she could tell her younger self she would be able to do this, the poor girl would never believe it.

It doesn’t feel as good as it should. When she’s standing outside the bar, baffled by the tears in her eyes, sad little bag at her feet, she can’t keep lying to herself. But she still doesn’t _understand_.

She’s such a cliche.

Someone asks if there’s anyone they can call to come get her, and she must have given an answer because Violet is there in what feels like seconds. She pulls her into her arms, takes her bag, gently leads her back inside. Fame can hear her commanding voice asking if she needs to pay for her drinks, and how many she had. Fame clings to her, doesn’t realize she’s been saying _I’m such an idiot_ like a holy mantra until Violet is staring straight at her, hands squeezing hard on her shoulders.

“You’re not an idiot,” she says, their foreheads almost touching. “Listen to me. You are _not_ an idiot.”

She lets herself be bundled into an Uber. Violet strokes her hair all through the ride.

***

Fame wakes up in a hotel room. She can’t see Violet anywhere, wonders if she dreamt her up the night before. Her phone is on the nightstand, and she can see her bag with all her things. It calms her a little, but she’s not fully at ease until she hears the series of beeps announcing Violet’s return.

“Hey,” she says, softly, as if talking to a small child. “I just went to get us something to eat. How are you feeling?”

“I’m alright,” she says, as a reflex. Violet gives her one of her patented _looks_.

“I brought you some orange juice, and a muffin. Oh, and some aspirin. You should invite me next time you want to party, I’ll be sure to show you a better time,” Violet says, with a wry smile.

Fame nods.

“Thanks,” she says.

“Yeah, no sweat. I told you to call me if you needed help and you did,” Violet says, trying to be reassuring in her own way. “Go back to sleep if you want. I’m heading home for a bit. You can text me whenever you’re ready to leave. I’d just like to know if you’re alright, I’ve got the room covered.”

She’s close now, brushes her fingers along her temple, like she’s petting a cat. Fame just nods.

“Don’t worry,” Violet says, as she leaves her to rest. “I won’t tell the others.”

Fame has never felt so much warmth towards her.

***

Nothing much changes in the coming days. Well, there are no sightings of Violet’s stalker since she spoke to him. He’s not exactly missed, and Fame hopes he’s found a more willing object for his affections.

The days aren’t as long as they were in the summer months, but there’s still plenty of sunshine.

Romeo does not stay away for long, though. He returns with a boldness he didn’t seem to possess before. Fame worries for Violet’s safety, watches with Katya and Trixie as Violet strides over to him with blood in her eyes.

“What the _fuck_ are you doing back here?” Violet keeps an even tone, but Fame has clashed with her enough to hear the anger in her voice. “Why can’t you leave me alone? I’ve been very clear with you about my feelings. You— I don’t have _time_ to even tell you this. I’m calling the police.”

“I’m not here because I want you,” he says, with a laugh. “I just want closure.”

“Jesus _fucking_ Christ, what kind of closure could you possibly want from me?” Violet growls, her patience long gone.

“I tried, Violet,” he continues. “I really fucking tried. And fine, maybe I’m not the one to do it, I got that pretty fucking clear by now, but you need help.”

Violet just laughs incredulously.

He doesn’t let her cut in, seems to have shocked her into listening with his impudence.

“You’re wasting your life,” he says, and Fame doesn’t have the best vantage point from which to see her face, but she knows Violet is ready to commit a felony. She moves closer, in case she needs to prevent a serious maiming.

“Do they know what you’re doing?” he suddenly acknowledges their audience. “Do they know you’re a whore? She has these men—”

He isn’t able to finish before Violet is on him.

Fame can see Katya move, quick as lightning, to grab a hold of Violet.

Violet is screaming, thrashing against Katya’s hold. She accidentally lands a hit on Trixie, as she tries to help Katya. She is a fountain of curses, but she doesn’t deny it.

“So what if I’m a whore?” she screams. “It’s my life! Who the fuck do you think you are?”

Fame is rooted to her spot.

She knows she can’t judge, that she’s not an honest person herself, that Violet is _not a monster_. But in that moment, she sees her as a complete stranger.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come see me at [@sayakamagika](http://sayakamagika.tumblr.com) on tumblr!


	3. heart of gold

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> welp, this took a bit longer than expected! i’ll be overtaking my notes after the next chapter too, so updates will arrive when they arrive.
> 
> that being said, i’m honestly floored with the positive reception this fic has gotten. i thank you guys for all the encouragement because boy howdy, if you talk to me regularly you know how thirsty i am for that. so really, this chapter is all thanks to those of you who have said my story is not a flaming pile of doodoo. i love you all.

Violet left home as soon as she graduated high school. She would have left sooner, but her parents were watching her like a hawk for signs of an imminent mental breakdown. When she turned 18 and had a high school diploma in the can, though, they couldn’t object to her asserting her right as an adult to do whatever the fuck she wanted. Admittedly, she had no direction and could have wound up just about anywhere. As her options included ending up dead in a ditch somewhere in the Bible Belt, finding herself dancing at a seedy Boston bar called Alyssa’s Secret was a stroke of luck.

She skips the part about the possible mental breakdown, and her lack of direction, when recounting the story to her housemates. She’s being prodded to reveal more than she ever wanted to about herself as it is, and that would just raise more questions.

She enjoyed working at Alyssa’s Secret, mostly because the titular woman is batshit insane in the best possible way. She may own a strip club, but she is still a God fearing Southern woman who would have her girls say grace over Chinese takeout. Violet still sees her from time to time. Sometimes she even shows up at Alyssa’s home to pray over lo mein and enjoy her company. She tries not to laugh at how she looks in a face mask, and the faces she makes when she’s reacting to literally anything. Violet has to respect the fact that Alyssa somehow made a sleazy bar filled with leering men feel like _home_ , how she made herself a loving, if questionable mother figure to the girls that work there. Even prodigal daughters like Violet.

“Baby,” Alyssa had said to her when she left her care, the feeling of her acrylics as she tenderly caressed her face as comforting as a mother’s touch. “I just hope you find peace. I pray for you every day.”

She had also enjoyed the dancing, no matter how greasy the clientele. She lost herself in the performance most of the time, something she can still do in her current line of work. She enjoys the work a little less now, so there’s less guilt in it for her. As someone living a stolen life, it’s not fair for her to be enjoying herself too much.

This part is also a little too personal for the other girls to hear. Fame might be looking at her like she owes them all an explanation for her sins, but _Fame_ of all people getting all twisted up over not knowing a person’s whole entire truth is just _rich_. She gives them the bare facts; no talking about her feelings, no bringing up other people’s private business, and absolutely no apologies.

She fell into sugaring as much as anyone can. It was her and Valentina, who was tired of suffering drunk randoms touching her ass and the ensuing spot of bother when they would have to answer to security, who struck out together. Or, well, Valentina did it first, lived to tell the tale, and then Violet followed suit with whatever advice she could get. She currently has three men as her clients.

If the others thought she was a college student, it was not misinformation on her part. She never said a word about where her money came from, or what she was doing with her life. Maybe she let them think what they wanted, but she did _not_ lie to them.

“You weren’t truthful,” Fame says, with a tone that sounds nothing short of petulant to Violet.

“Okay, Melissa, let’s say I went ahead and told you guys I had sugar daddies right out the gate,” she says, acid laced through every word. “How would you have taken that?”

“We wouldn’t have hurt you,” says Katya. Her hand rests on hers, and Violet likes the warmth. It’s not enough to make her all better, but it’s nice.

“But you have to understand why I wouldn’t be sharing all of this right away, especially when I didn’t know you that well.”

Fame’s lip trembles, but she doesn’t respond. Katya squeezes Violet’s hand. Trixie holds an ice pack against her face, shoved into her hands by Katya (or Fame, she’s the one who usually does that kind of thing) sometime before they all sat down. Violet doesn’t remember having hit her, but maybe she can spare _one_ apology on this clusterfuck of a night.

Pearl clears her throat.

“Let’s just leave it,” she says. “She’s not breaking any house rules, because we have none. And if I don’t sleep now, I won’t get to sleep at all. So let’s just fucking drop this and let Violet do whatever.”

Pearl shrugs nonchalantly. She had arrived just as they had all sat down to let the dust settle over the evening. She shouldn’t be surprised about a single thing she’s learned tonight, and Violet almost wants to hug her for what she thinks might be an attempt at kindness. Her face is completely closed off, though, as it often is when Violet tries to gauge her feelings. It’s annoying.

“Maybe we should make some,” says Fame. “Rules, I mean. Ru hasn’t, but we’re the ones who live here.”

Violet laughs.

“If lying is against the rules in this house you’ll be packing your bags right after me,” she says.

“I’ve _never_ hidden anything like _this_!”

Violet tries to remember that she cares for this girl, that she really fucking grew to like the bitch.

 _Fame’s never seen shit like this_ , she thinks to herself. _She needs time._

But she has to admit, at least to herself, that she’s hurt.

“So it’s like that, then?” she says, before she can stop herself for her reputation’s sake.

“Let it be, Fame,” Pearl says, exasperated.

She turns to Violet. “You, too.”

“Everyone has secrets,” says Trixie, softly, with a thoughtful look in her eyes.

So Fame lets it be, and Violet holds back her useless tears until she falls asleep.

***

One of the men Violet used to do business with had a spare apartment in Boston he had wanted her to use. It’s amazing that there are people out there who just happen to have spare apartments sitting around, like an extra toothbrush or something. Ridiculous as it may be for such a specimen to exist, he did, and Violet used to fuck him for money until his wife finally had enough and eviscerated him financially.

She hadn’t taken residence there, though, because she wouldn’t want to close the distance she creates by living completely apart from her men. If she let one of them house her on their property, it could read as a higher level of ownership than she’s comfortable with. More importantly, she likes sharing a house with other girls, girls she mostly likes, girls that she can squabble and hang out with like any regular girl her age.

Violet had kept an emotional distance from them as well, though. She’d kept her personal business to herself, and never brought a man home. Alright, there was _one_ who insisted on chivalry and dropped her off at home after a date, but she maneuvered it so he never left the car. When Katya and Ginger would tease her about her “rich boyfriend”, she would just wink and keep her silence.

She never spoke of her past, or anything pertaining to herself apart from basic likes and dislikes, or cunty opinions that still wouldn’t reveal _too_ much. Maybe it was shame that made her do it, as much as she asserts to herself that it wasn’t, that she has none. She felt safe being unknown, and having a layer of secrecy stripped away from her has left her feeling uncomfortably exposed.

She _wants_ to spend as little time as she can at home, but she also feels like she has every right to be there. She doesn’t want to be driven out of a place she pays for, just like the rest of them, even if they don’t like how she does it. She ends up lounging around the house during the days, as if the atmosphere wasn’t heavier than normal. As everyone now knows, she typically works at night, and the weather is starting to get depressing.

She starts her mornings as she always has, ever since she left the relative safety of Alyssa’s Secret. She’s part of a group chat that includes Valentina, to the extent that she is willing to participate, and two other girls she used to dance with. The best description she can think of for Gia and Laganja, if she is to boil their often loud, sometimes over dramatic tendencies down to their barest element, is that they’re darlings.

How Gia and Laganja could consider Violet a person they ought to impose a friendship on is a mystery, she has never been the type who exudes warmth or friendliness. She sometimes envies Katya for her strengths in those areas, but she’s not too hung up on befriending the whole world so it’s not something she’ll cry at night over. However much of a bitch she came across, it did not stop them from taking her in as a friend, and it was their idea to put a group chat together when Valentina stopped dancing. They were worried something could happen to her, and wanted a way to know for sure that she was alright. Violet isn’t sure that being required to report their well-being in the morning is the surest way to keep track of each other, especially when Valentina often forgets and, when she does remember, generally reports her safety with a single rose emoji. Violet still checks the chat when she wakes up every day, and sends off a couple of messages, just to keep in touch. She thinks it might be nice to have a girls night, even if it’s just Gia and Laganja, and suggests that they should meet up sometime soon.

All things considered, Violet has an easy, comfortable life. Especially in comparison to Pearl, who she can often see walking home in the wee small hours of the morning if her Uber drives her along her route, provided she hasn’t dozed off. If she ever does end up killed as a result of her work, at least she’ll have hope of seeing a dear friend again.

She looks forward to it sometimes, especially now that things are tense at home. Only a little, though; she is sure to put wishes for death out of her mind just as they appear. Even Lilli would laugh at her for it, if she can hear those thoughts wherever she is.

She’s not foolish enough to go out of her way to seek death, not really, but she knows it can come at any moment no matter how careful or undeserving you are.

She remembers to check her mail every day. She gets letters every month, with the addresses written in the same flowery cursive as the notes on the fridge letting her know there was lasagna in the stove after school. She never reads them, puts them in a box with the others.

***

“So,” Trixie says. “What’s it like to be a sinful woman of the night?”

Though things between them got to a rocky start, their relationship has improved to the point where Trixie’s question only makes Violet laugh. Fame isn’t talking to her, though she’s stopped glaring at her and sometimes looks at her with her usual softness. Since Pearl is… well, _Pearl_ , the only housemates she is currently on regular speaking terms with are Katya and Trixie.

Violet and Trixie are lounging on the living room couch, though Violet is doing more lounging than Trixie is. Trixie sat down with a string of complaints about how much she hates her past self for thinking introductory French was the right choice for her foreign language requirement, and has had her nose buried deep in her textbook, occasionally muttering some phrases in an atrocious accent. Katya’s esoteric schedule would have her home in about an hour or so, and Violet figured Trixie would just sit there trying her best to learn _something_ before her fluent French-speaking saviour arrives. Apparently, though, Trix is in the mood for conversation, which suits Violet just fine. She cannot find a better way to occupy herself for the life of her, so she entertains Trixie’s nonsense with pleasure.

“It’s great,” Violet says. “Satan gives really good employee perks.”

Trixie smiles at that, brows raised. “But really, is it hard? Are the men, like, super gross? Have you narrowly escaped death?”

“I once got beat up at a gas station, but otherwise I’ve been pretty lucky.”

“Huh,” Trixie says, as if hearing about the weather that afternoon. “A gas station. Interesting.”

Violet shrugs. “It’s not that bad. Men are pretty gross in general, but it’s just acting. Doing a convincing reading of Juliet’s parts in my high school English class was harder.”

“I was pretty good at Shakespeare,” says Trixie. “Used to practice the accent in my spare time.”

“Nerd.”

Trixie shrugs back at her and resumes her reading. Violet gives Netflix another disappointing once-over.

“Why so curious about my work? Thinking of breaking into the industry?”

Violet figures five minutes is long enough for Trixie to thank her for the interruption.

“Maybe,” Trixie replies. “If I could give up my glamorous college girl life, working at a coffee shop to make it through.”

Violet smiles. “You have it pretty good, college girl.”

“You don’t think I’d have what it takes?” Trixie says, her voice teasing, but Violet can detect a hint of insecurity in her response.

“No,” she responds, opting for honesty. “You’re not ugly or anything. If you went for the Anna Nicole look, you’d probably do fine. But I think you’re too soft.”

Trixie has proven herself to have a more cutting tongue than Violet had assumed upon first meeting her, and she may very well have a hidden well of strength that she doesn’t show in her everyday life. When Violet thinks of the casual bullshit she has to put up with from her men, though, the way she has to simper and be soft when her natural response would be to smack them, she’s not sure that a girl like Trixie would last long. Trixie, who quietly bottled up her anger for weeks and ultimately wasn’t able to prevent her eventual outburst, is better off staying where she is.

Even if she was able to handle that kind of emotionally demanding work environment because she works in customer service, it’s not like she has to fuck someone after they yell at her about screwing up their super specific coffee order. Violet doesn’t think Trixie has seen a dick in her life, let alone touched one. Violet hadn’t had her first time before she started out either, but at least she had experience titillating a audience of greasy men before she actually had to let them have her.

Besides, it’s not like Violet _cared_ about her first time by then.

Trixie smiles wryly at her, sighs. “Maybe I should be more like Pearl if I want to make better money.”

Violet huffs. “I really hope you’re not being serious.”

“Am I not tough enough for that either?” Violet can feel her growing annoyance.

_God, she’s sensitive._

“I don’t think anyone is tough enough for that kind of life,” she explains. “Pearl pretty much has a permanent smokey eye from how little sleep she gets. There’s no way she’s not hanging on by a thread, you can’t live like a robot and not short circuit eventually. You know she fainted on the bus once? She came home one night and said that happened to her in the morning, as if that kind of thing is normal. She fucking passed out, then got back up and kept on going with her day as if her body wasn’t telling her to chill the fuck out. And for what? She can’t even replace that damn pair of boots she always wears. They’re literally held together by duct tape.”

Violet shakes her head. She remembers how angry she had been when she heard about that, how she had snapped at Pearl about how no one in the house wanted to have to arrange her funeral. Pearl had told her it was none of her fucking business.

She was right, Violet isn’t really her friend or anything. The thought of Pearl wearing herself down like that and acting like it didn’t matter hurt _Violet_ , but honestly she shouldn’t care about whether Pearl lives or dies if she thinks about it. At worst, they’ll have to find someone else to take her place.

“Don’t do that to yourself, Trace,” she says, finally.

Trixie nods somberly, goes back to her studies. Violet leaves her to that.

One look at her phone shows that, at some point during the last bit of her conversation with Trixie, Gia and Laganja have responded with enthusiasm at the prospect of meeting up. They have found themselves with time on their hands, and if Violet’s willing, they can all go out dancing.

Violet pounces on the offer.

***

Gina Machina is a more conventional club than the name would imply. The first time Violet went, she expected it to be a full heavy metal fantasy, or a leather joint. It’s a pretty standard, LGBT-geared joint, and it’s where Pearl usually works when she DJs. Sometimes she’ll bring a flyer home for some event she’ll be spinning at in a half hearted attempt at marketing, and whoever is available will dutifully attend.

Violet didn’t know if Pearl would be working when she decided to bring Gia and Laganja for their girl’s night, isn’t privy to her schedule at all. For all she knows it’s a waitressing and gas station night for Pearl. She tells herself that she’s not being creepy at all, Gina Machina is a public place, and she just happens to have Pearl on her mind after her conversation with Trixie.

“Whoa, so it’s _not_ a leather bar?” Laganja says, looking a little put out. She and Gia have coordinated these adorable, pseudo-biker chic ensembles (they like to match), apparently having been as fooled by the name as Violet had been once.

Violet can’t tell if they give off a strong sisterly vibe, or if they’re fucking, but if anything’s clear about Gia and Laganja it’s that they’re a package deal. The only time they’re apart is if they’re not scheduled at the bar on the same night, and Violet is sure Alyssa arranges it so they don’t have to endure being separated often.

“I love this song,” Gia says, gently starting to sway. “And we look, like, totally hot. Let’s just dance.”

The three of them hold hands as they enter the fray. Violet is occasionally pulled into a three-way huddle when one of them wants to talk about the music, take a joint trip to the washroom, or see if she can score some drinks at the bar by standing there. Sometimes, Gia and Laganja disappear into the crowd, and Violet lets the music take her away. She sends fleeting looks at the DJ booth.

She ends up spotting her at the bar, almost slumped onto the counter, talking to one of the bartenders. Violet’s always in awe at the transformation in Pearl when she fixes herself up for a DJ gig. Her clothes are mostly the same. One thing Violet has been wanting to ask Pearl is if she really lives for the grunge aesthetic, or if she favours it because it can be achieved pretty easily and will transition well enough to a club setting. But sometimes she’ll pull her hair up, and she always does her makeup.

Underneath Pearl’s chronically exhausted, downtrodden, modern American college student persona, she hides the ability to shapeshift into a smoky, mysterious beauty. Violet almost did a double take the first time she saw her with a _real_ smokey eye, sharp-as-fuck eyeliner, the septum piercing she hadn’t noticed before in. Her ratty clothes look more purposefully distressed than anything, her sorry excuse for boots downright punk. She’s beautiful like this, but Violet likes her better in her gas station uniform. Still, seeing her makes her feel like she’s been caught in something, even though Pearl hasn’t spotted her.

Violet’s relationship with Pearl runs hot and cold, the shifts in temperature controlled by Pearl in a way Violet hasn’t figured out. She’s insufferable that way, but when she chooses to be cool and lets Violet exist near her as a companion, Violet enjoys it while it lasts. When Pearl shuts herself back up, it hurts, and Violet is not the kind of girl who begs for attention. She often thinks to herself that she should stop trying to talk to Pearl at all, become completely indifferent to her because it makes no sense to be chasing her. It’s just demeaning, beneath her. She’s not blind, or stupid, but it hurts her pride to think of the truth, and she reminds herself that there are better candidates for a new female best friend if that’s what she’s longing for.

Violet goes to sit with her. She might as well say hello. It’s not a crime.

“Fancy seeing you here,” Violet says, coyly, settling down on the stool next to Pearl.

Pearl raises her eyebrow back at her. “Did the trauma of being stalked somehow turn you into a stalker too?”

Violet shrugs. “Maybe I wanted to know how it feels.”

Pearl laughs darkly. “Want a drink? I have drink tickets.”

“Treat me, then.”

They could be friends. Violet always thinks about this when they have moments like this, normal ones where Pearl lets herself be a damn _person_ , and come down from whatever tower she loves locking herself in. Violet whispers her order into Pearl’s ear, and Pearl in turn waves to the bartender so she can order it.

Violet takes some time to study Pearl’s hands. She’s wrapped a bandage around her left hand, and Violet is startled by it, not having noticed it until now. She asks about it while she waits for her drink.

“Spilled some soup on it,” Pearl says. “It was sent back for being too cold, and it was fresh off the stove to start so when they reheated it, it was, like, volcanic hot. I don’t know what I was thinking, it’s been a while since I spilled something, but it’s not that bad. Looks a bit gnarly, so I was asked to wrap it up so that no one had to see my gross hand while I served them.”

Violet runs hot with anger.

“Heaven forbid some poor customer have to look at your injury,” she says, with a scoff. “I bet they’d ask you to chop it off if the stump wouldn’t be even more uncomfortable for the assholes you’re serving.”

Pearl shrugs. “It’s a ritzy place.”

Violet once took one of her men to the restaurant. She’d wanted to make him give Pearl a big tip, since she’d mentioned having a hard time that month. Pearl had told her never to do that again.

“Are you on a date?” Pearl asks, coolly.

Violet shakes her head. She scans the room for Gia and Laganja, points them out when she finds them. They’re in show mode, having carved a small stage out so they can dance together, Ganja finding ways to show off the fact that she’s a human elastic band. They’ve got a small group of guys hollering encouragement and _yaaaasss bitch-_ es.

“I’m with friends.”

Pearl nods.

“And you’re sitting here, talking to me. I’m flattered.”

Violet’s drink appears before her, and she takes a sip.

“It’s been a while since we talked,” she says. “You’re even more of a woman around town than I am.”

Pearl snorts.

“Sure,” she says, with a roll of her eyes.

Something about her tone bothers Violet, as if Pearl is using that simple word to take a swing at her. She frowns.

“I’m very good at it,” she says, somewhat deflated.

Pearl looks somewhat chastened. She doesn’t respond, watches her fingers tap out a slow rhythm on the bar counter.

“When’s your set?” Violet asks, to break the tension.

Pearl looks at her phone. “I’m up in fifteen.”

Violet shifts the ice in her glass with her straw. “I’m excited for that.”

Violet returns Pearl’s cautious smile. They don’t really chat much after that.

That night, Violet dreams of pale blonde hair, blue eyes, a girl helping her press a bag of frozen berries against the bruise on her face. She makes a smoothie for breakfast the next morning.

***

Violet prefers nights where she doesn’t dream at all. When she does, and when it’s not about Pearl, it’s about…

It’s about something she hasn’t talked about since she left home, something she tries not to think about. She wakes up drenched in sweat, her throat sore, heart beating madly. The closest she’s come to mentioning it was that night when Katya came home saying there was a ghost haunting the house.

She woke up chilled to the core from a bad dream the morning after that. It was weird.

Fame had asked her if she’d noticed anything different in the energy of the house. It seemed like she was trying to find out if Violet had been affected by the idea of a ghost haunting, since she brought up this weird theory she had about how each of the girls had a certain energy that they brought in with them, but something just felt off, foreign. Violet humoured her, told her it was probably just Trixie, since she was still pretty new.

“No, I sense this quiet sadness coming from her, but I’m used to it,” Fame had said, casually spreading the living hell out of this Biscoff cookie stuff onto a piece of toast.

“I’m sorry, I’m not a qualified enough medium,” Violet had responded, watching her with some alarm. This was a little after her anniversary dinner with the asshole she’s dating, and Violet was sure he’d pulled some shit Fame wasn’t telling her about. “What am I trying to feel?”

“Like, I don’t know. To me it’s just like something’s watching me, like it’s just there silently judging me,” Fame said, frowning. “You wanna take half of this?”

Violet ate half of the toast, and Fame fixed another slice up for herself after she was done with her half. At the time, Violet _did_ feel like she was being watched. She had some jerkass with a saviour complex hanging around the house, like it was a public place with free wifi, so of course she felt like someone was watching her. She’s surprised he never tried to break in and sniff her panties, though what he ended up doing has affected her more than it would have if he had. Violet would have given him a stack of her used panties, maybe even rubbed one out while wearing them first, if it would have gotten him to keep his mouth shut.

It’s strange that she still feels like something is following her, but she doesn’t think much of it. Could be another stalker.

It makes more sense to describe how different it feels to share a house with Fame and not be the way they used to it in terms of that “energy” stuff Fame was talking about back then. Being in the same room as her, listening as she makes idle chatter with Trixie or Katya, feels strange now that she can sense a barrier between them, one that prevents her from joining in the conversation with a casual barb or something like she used to. Fame has started averting her eyes in Violet’s presence, but she fixed some cocoa for her one night when they were in the kitchen together. She wouldn’t look at her while she slid her mug over to her.

Violet wants to shake her, to hash out whatever’s happening between her because she hates finding something funny online and not being able to show her, misses teasing her. She even wishes she’d start nagging her about stupid shit again, and even borrow another top as if Violet wouldn’t notice.

She texts Valentina, reminding herself that if she really wants a female bestie, she doesn’t have to limit herself to the girls in the house. It’s a shot in the dark, Valentina only bothers socializing when she wants to, but she can be good company. Seeing Gia and Laganja was nice, and _God_ , she really does need to spend time with different people. She doesn’t know when the bulk of her human interaction got reduced the men she services and the girls she lives with.

Two days later, Valentina responds.

***

Valentina lives in a tiny apartment, the last place one would expect a goddess like Valentina to live. Violet thinks she might actually be the only person Valentina brings there. She complains that it’s a shithole, that things break all the time and she suspects the landlord responds slowly on purpose because she doesn’t think blowing him for faster service is worth it. Most of what she gets from her men goes towards keeping up the appearance of luxury, and to support her mother and sister back in some town near Guadalajara. She has a small shrine dedicated to the Virgin of Guadalupe on her dresser. It basically consists of one candle and a small sculpture. She likes to keep the candle lit while she’s in.

Valentina explains that there’s nothing in her fridge, so they stop at a corner store to get beers, planning to order Chinese or something if they get hungry. The cashier recognizes her, and they engage in friendly banter while Valentina pays for their stuff. She puts on a brilliant smile to talk to him, and keeps it up until she and Violet are in the elevator heading up to her apartment. Then, her face relaxes, and she suddenly looks somewhat worn out. It’s her night off, so she didn’t bother to put on any makeup, and it’s a testament to the beauty of her smile that it’s only when she lets it fade that Violet can see any sign of stress on her face.

“Brace yourself, I’ve made some changes at home,” she says, once they reach her door.

The “changes” turn out to be a tiny kitten, probably Siamese, with big blue eyes and a clearly strong set of pipes. Her name is Lupe, and Valentina has worked a miracle to fit her needs into the shoebox she calls home. She doesn’t light her candle when they come in, and has fixed a small shelf over her dresser so she can put her shrine up a little higher.

“One of my boys got her for his daughter,” Valentina explains. “She changed her mind about wanting a kitten when she actually got her. I got him to let me have her.”

Valentina’s fridge is devoid of anything for herself apart from a jug of water, but there’s a tin of wet food for Lupe, and a bag of dry cat food in her pantry. Violet watches her mix them up while she refills her empty bowl. They grab the menu Valentina’s pinned on her fridge for the Chinese. Feeding the cat somehow made them hungry. Violet notes that the menu is from the same place Alyssa usually gets their food from when she serves Chinese.

There’s no balcony, but Valentina’s pushed a desk up against her window. They sit there, legs entwined, beers cooling in the fridge while they wait for their food. Violet fills her in on her home situation, while Lupe adds her commentary, flitting about the room in a nonsensical pattern.

“That’s rough,” Valentina says, touching Violet’s hand.

“I can get you an extra key,” Valentina offers, while they eat their noodles. “You can have the place to yourself when I’m away, and it would actually work out pretty well now that I have Lupe. If I’m here, and you’re desperate, we can try to squeeze in.”

Violet thanks her, sincerely. Valentina is such an intensely private person that she can recognize the magnitude of the offer.

She’s feeling good when she walks home. Valentina may not be the liveliest companion, but she and Violet have an understanding. Her mood cools a bit when she nears the house.

“—I’m not _ashamed_ of you! What am I doing to make you feel this way?”

“The way you looked when I offered to take you to the door, like you wouldn’t want one of your roommates to see us.”

“Maybe I just looked surprised because you don’t _like_ coming over _because_ of my roommates? Aaron, really, I have no problem being seen with you—”

“You don’t post about me anymore.”

“ _Because you didn’t like it_!”

They’re loud enough for her to hear from a pretty good distance, though Violet has to strain to catch Fame’s asshole boyfriend’s grumblings. She’s never understood how a girl like Fame, beautiful Fame with her bright personality and big heart, could tie herself to such a useless dirtbag. She takes a deep breath, knowing she can’t say anything when she passes them but unwilling to stand on the sidewalk until they’re done arguing.

Out of the corner of her eye, Violet sees him grab Fame’s arm, harshly telling her to calm down. Fame flinches, and Violet’s patience runs out in an instant.

She holds her clutch with the buckle facing down, so that when she brings it down on his head he can feel it. “Oops,” she says.

Fame screams.

“What is _wrong_ with you?”

He won’t let Fame tend to him, but his words revolve on what a psycho Violet is.

Fame follows her as she walks away, shouting at her. Violet shuts herself up in her room. When she calms down, she finds that she’s not very pleased with herself.

Fame won’t acknowledge her presence for the next week.

***

She’s off balance, and she’s starting to notice. When it’s bad enough that a client asks her what her problem is over dinner, she starts to think she might want to fix it somehow. Violet isn’t a stranger to her emotions going on a rampage. She once forgot how to breathe for a moment, after seeing a school bus drive by from the patio at a cafe. She always lets these feelings take their course, but it’s been years since she’s really had someone to talk to about her innermost feelings.

She decides she needs to do something stupid; stupid as in “light-hearted”, not stupid as in attacking a friend’s shitty boyfriend and hurting her feelings by proxy.

She asks Katya if she’s free to hang out.

“Is it a date?” Katya asks, having told her she’s not exactly free, but she’s _very_ eager to avoid her current responsibilities. Trixie’s gone to the library with some friend of hers, fully intending to actually study. Katya thinks that if she tries to study, she’ll be well on her way to another mental breakdown.

Violet pretends to think deeply about it.

“You got it,” she says, winking.

Katya mimes being shot in the heart, but she’s smiling as she “dies” from her wound.

They go to the arcade. It’s exactly the kind of stupid day Violet was looking for, and Katya is the perfect companion for this kind of thing. She approaches everything with such a childlike exuberance that Violet honestly can’t remember having this much fun in ages. Katya gives her a garish, plastic necklace out of the prize vault with her tickets, while Violet chooses a cup of tiny hands to give in return.

After that, they went out for shitty diner food and milkshakes. Katya claims she can shoot milkshake out of her nose, but can’t seem to demonstrate it when Violet asks her to. Apparently, it’s a talent she only has when her moon is in Jupiter, or something.

“That’s bullshit,” Violet says, grinning.

“How can you accuse me so unfairly on our honeymoon?” Katya says, feigning offense.

The conversation is light. Violet loves being around Katya. It was hard to be without her, there was a lightness missing from the house while she was away. Everyone, except for Trixie probably, knows Katya isn’t quite the carefree, happy person she appears to be most of the time, but what she’s sometimes unable to inspire in herself she can bring about in others. She lights up a room without even trying. Violet thinks she might want to seek her out more often, when Trixie isn’t hogging her.

Being with Katya is a short reprieve, but the ennui that has been plaguing Violet returns as they walk arm in arm, aimlessly, to help the bad food go down. Katya tugs on her arm, asks if she’d like to sit down somewhere.

They find a bus shack and settle down on the bench. The sun’s setting by then, though it isn’t that late. It’s autumn, after all, so that’s to be expected.

Violet isn’t sure why she does it, but if she reaches she can tell herself she’s going crazy because she misses the summer sunshine. Maybe it’s how uncomplicated it feels to be around Katya, how she’s the one remaining housemate Violet has a normal, longstanding, friendly relationship with.

“Wanna hear a ghost story?”

Katya nods cautiously in response.

So, Violet tells her about the friend she had all through her childhood, all the way to high school. Lilli. They were Lilli and Violet, and it was _so stupid_. They almost graduated together.

She tells the story matter-of-factly, and it has to be the lamest ghost story ever told. It’s so average. She had a best friend, but now she’s on her own, and it’s been a couple of years now. She still dreams about her. She doesn’t know why that matters now.

Violet regrets her candour when she sees tears welling in Katya’s eyes. Katya holds her close for what feels like hours, refuses to let go of her hand as they make their way home. Violet hates the look in her eyes, hates herself for having made her so sad.

She still feels empty inside.

***

Having taken advantage of being home before midnight, Violet goes to sleep at 11:30PM only to wake up at 4AM feeling like she’s been punched in the gut. She creeps out into the kitchen. No one else is awake, so she takes a seat on her own. She thinks she’s starting to understand what Fame was babbling about when she wouldn’t let the ghost thing rest. She remembers how casually she’d claimed it as her own, and the thought of it makes her laugh.

From her place in the kitchen, she can catch sight of the front foyer, so she easily sees Pearl come in. Violet gets up, heads over to greet her.

Pearl nods at her.

“I heard what you did to Fame’s boyfriend,” she says, greeting her back in her own special way.

“Are you dying to tell me off now?” Violet asks. She’s struck at how tired her own voice sounds.

“No,” Pearl says, removing her boots.

When Pearl stands back up, boots shoved carelessly to the side, Violet has crossed most of the distance between them. It doesn’t really surprise her, looking back at her erratic behaviour, that she would do something as stupid as leaning in to kiss Pearl. She has to admit she’d been wanting it.

The real shocker is that Pearl kisses her back.

 


	4. laika

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> alright, so here is where my initial planning has left me, so i’ll be going back to the drawing board and making a conspiracy theory web to map out the way to the finish line. mind you, the finish line is looking to be very far in the horizon, so if you’ve been here for a while i recommend getting comfortable. i’ll surprise myself if we don’t have many chaptets ahead of us with these girls.
> 
> also this is the last of my first batch of single pov chapters. the operating maxim of this fic is that katya is always fifteen minutes late with starbucks, but that doesn’t mean we won’t be hearing from her. she’ll just have to share the stage.
> 
> and lastly... **content warning:** pearl’s backstory contains a hint of narrowly avoided incest. please tread carefully. 
> 
> now, let’s hear from the quietest of these girls.

Pearl has an excellent memory, though there are days where her faculties are not intact and her mind easily led astray. She remembers enough of the night she first met Violet to paint a decent picture in her head. The thing that stands out the most in her memory is the look she’d seen in her eyes, willful and defiant. She’d spent several nights dreaming of those eyes, afterwards.

Pearl’s been working at the gas station longer than any other job she currently holds. She was there when she noticed some kind of scuffle outside of the kiosk she was stationed in. It was late, she’d been watching over a desolate store for hours and had even pulled out one of her books to get some studying in. All she could hear was the buzzing of the lights, so the sound of shouting carried inside with great clarity. She decided to take a look, in case she needed to bring in law enforcement.

The first time she laid eyes on Violet, she was being held by two men while a woman smacked her upside the face with her purse, called her a homewrecking whore, standard jilted wife fare. Violet barked back, daring her to keep hitting her. She already looked a little beat up. Pearl thought it was foolish to provoke someone with such a clear advantage in the situation, that she could easily walk away and mind her own business.

Instead, she sauntered over to play the hero.

“If I have to call the cops just so I can take my smoke break in peace, I will,” she’d said.

She didn’t know where she pulled the courage to do that from, and that she was able to stretch it so far that she could meet Violet’s assailants with stony silence as they protested.

Violet relaxed quickly once Pearl had pulled her back into the store. Pearl let her settle against the drinks cooler, then fetched a bag of frozen berries to settle against the bruise forming on her face. Violet cheerfully introduced herself, and tried to hold a friendly conversation while icing her bruise.

“Anything I can do for you?” she’d said. “You know, for being my white knight and all.”

Pearl told her to just pay for the berries before leaving.

(She’s never noticed Violet’s love of mixed berry smoothies.)

When Violet first came to the house, Pearl had extended her hand and introduced herself as if she’d never seen her before.

***

At first it only happens when they chance to arrive home around the same time. Sometimes she walks in to Violet waiting up for her, seated at the kitchen table with her clothes from the evening still on. She smells faintly of cigarette smoke some nights, cologne on others, but Pearl thinks she can tell when she’s been with a man. She looks particularly expensive those nights, and though Violet is very put together on the regular there’s a subtle difference between how she dresses for her men, and how she looks when she just wanted a little glamour in her day. Pearl has this mad urge to buy some of her own perfume, and to see if she can get Violet to put it on when they have sex so she can smell something of hers on her skin, but she never remembers to do it. She likes it when the scent of sweat, and of their sex, creeps into prominence as they lie in bed together. She can’t appreciate it for long, though, since she falls asleep quickly after they’re done. She’ll drag her way through her day, but gets a miraculous burst of energy when she needs it to fuck Violet.

Eventually Pearl gathers up the courage to knock on Violet’s door, on nights when she’s turned in earlier. Violet gives her the go ahead to crawl into her bed even if their schedules have her stumbling in when Violet’s already asleep.

“It’s nice, waking up with you,” Violet says, unable to meet her eyes and clearly trying to sound aloof. “You can even use my room when I’m not here, if Trixie’s bothering you.”

Pearl kisses her on the nape of her neck to thank her, blushing even though she’s kissed her in more intimate places.

Maybe, all this time, Pearl was waiting for Violet to make the first move. There’s always been something in her heart that pulled her towards Violet, but Pearl would only see danger when she looked at her. Even now, when she’s been spending nights in Violet’s bed or popping in if she’s got a second in the middle of the day, she wonders if the touch of her skin will shock her to death.

One of her favourite things to do is to wipe the makeup off of Violet’s face for her, when she’s too eager to be touched to get it off before pulling Pearl into bed with her. She likes catching glances of Violet’s sleeping face, when her sleep is untroubled, before leaving her to prepare for her day. There’s an innocence to her that Pearl has never seen before. On one occasion, Pearl was with her when she had one of her nightmares. She held her close until it passed, and pretended that nothing out of the ordinary had happened come morning.

She likes the little whines she can get out of Violet, when she’s trying to stay quiet. They both try, Pearl wouldn’t want the other girls to hear too much either, but she gets a sense of pride from making Violet slip up. She knows, from the wicked grin she’s faced with if it happens, that Violet feels the same way when she causes that same loss of control in Pearl.

Violet’s body is like a revelation to Pearl, who had only ever borne the desire of others with discomfort and never once felt it in herself until the night they met. She has to admit that there were times where she mistook the feelings she got from being around Violet with fear, and some disgust. She remembers what the woman beating Violet had said the night she saw her for the first time, so when her secrets were laid out for their household to process, she wasn’t surprised. When she’s laid bare before her, Pearl understands that what she wanted was to have her like this. There _might_ , in fact, have been some fear mixed in there too, but the dominant feeling was desire. Pearl is considerate enough not to leave the marks she’d like to on Violet’s skin.

Violet is smooth all over, save for a carefully maintained spot of hair pointing the way to her pussy, like an arrow. She’s known to use up all the hot water as she shaves the greater part of her body hair away in the shower, because as tough as she acts, she’s never taken well to waxing. This ritual, followed by the leisurely application of lotion, is the reason the other girls like to rush into the bathroom in the mornings before Violet has the chance. Pearl has no time for anything like that, and will simply cover her legs in lieu of shaving. Violet likes to trace the wild trail leading from her belly button with her lips.

Sometimes, it’s hard to leave her in bed when Pearl has to go. She wakes up with Violet’s long limbs around her, feeling like she’d be happy to just let her keep her captive. Pearl can’t give in to this, no matter how sweet Violet’s face is, especially when she wakes up as Pearl extracts herself from their embrace and blinks groggily up at her. It’s hard when she’s still asleep, too.

In spite of all this, Pearl is sure she doesn’t love her. She doesn’t have the _time_ to love her.

***

Pearl doesn’t like to admit that she hates her life, especially when the other girls pity her for it. Whenever any one of them expresses sympathy for her, she feels the need to act as if she’s having the time of her life. She insists that she’s relishing in her independence, that when the dust settles she will have a life that she forged all on her own, that all of it is worth being free. If this is the prime of her life, she might as well use it wisely so she can be comfortable when she’s not as strong.

The truth is, she’s not free, and more often than not she feels like a hamster on a wheel. For Pearl, though, the endless cracking of her joints is still easier to live with than pity.

Days are for school, and nights are for work. She’s thought about re-evaluating her schedule, to see if there’s any way to balance it a little better. She’d originally wanted to stack her schooling up so she could be finished faster, but reality nipped that idea in the bud. As it is, she might end up graduating a little late, but it can’t be helped.

It’s entirely possible that she’s not cut out to be in business administration. When it comes to re-evaluating her life, creating the time to seek out more help with her schoolwork often slips through the cracks in her pride and into the forefront of her mind. Every morning, she makes sure to be at the library at around 7AM, so she can hastily look over her work before her first class. She’s learned that the best she can hope for is to pass. She’ll never do remarkably well even if it would help her to suddenly become a genius.

Once in a while, she questions her decision to reach for what she feels is a secure path to a decently comfortable life instead of choosing to chase her passions. It’s not like there’s any guarantee of a good job when she’s done with the sensible course of study she’s turned out to not have a tremendous talent for, not in this economy. Then again, the closest she’s ever gotten to doing something that ignites a spark in her is DJing. When she had sat down to map out the course of her life, she hadn’t known that she might like to be a DJ, or do something with music. The business of surviving her day to day life takes precedence over thinking too hard about frivolous dreams and passions.

Her true dream is to have a simple job that provides her with a decently comfortable life, and to have a place of her own to shed her worries in after a long day. She wants to be still, to be safe, and to get at least a few deep breaths in every day. She wants a boring, average, _quiet_ life, one where she can feel like she’s finally come to the finish line in the rat race she’s been living in.

It sounds so reasonable, but the universe seems to think it’s too much to ask.

On waitressing days, she’s leaving campus by about 5PM, so she can make it to the restaurant on time. She’s aware that no matter what she does, her manager will somehow take offense, but being late won’t make it any better.

“That man has a problem with _everyone_ here,” Shangela says, as she presents Pearl with a glass of water. She does this every day they work together, will not rest until she drinks up and at least leans against the lockers for a little bit. In Pearl’s life, there are two people she can single out as the most relentless in their efforts to baby her. Shangela is one of them, and Pearl has given up trying to reject her care.

“Doesn’t everyone adore you?” Pearl asks, sipping her drink. She has to admit she needed it. It’s Wednesday and her classes cut it so short to her shift that she practically sprinted from campus.

Shangela shrugs dramatically. “He’s a special one. Gimme that glass back when you’re done. It better be empty!”

Pearl salutes her, and downs the rest of her water so she can hand the glass over right away.

“Sheesh,” says Shangela. “No need to knock it back like that, this isn’t a race! It’s not good for you to drink that fast, you could choke. Imagine that, you being dead from drowning in a glass of water at… your young age.”

Pearl rolls her eyes. “I’m 21.”

Shangela rolls her eyes right back. “Is your hand still hurting?”

She gestures to Pearl’s burned hand, still wrapped in its bandage. It wasn’t that seriously injured, in Pearl’s opinion, but she hasn’t bothered unwrapping it as of yet. Violet’s commented on it too, something that is so in line with her character that Pearl would have been shocked if she hadn’t said anything. It might be healed by now, but Pearl wouldn’t know. Violet offered to change the bandages for her, and let her close her eyes while she does if she’s scared of seeing what’s underneath.

“I’m trying to start a trend.”

Shangela shakes her head. “I should have done something. You shouldn’t have had to carry soup that hot.”

“The customer wanted it,” Pearl says, shrugging. Shangela’s the sous chef, a position she achieved only recently after years of blood, sweat, and strategically changing jobs if her analysis of the situation called for it. Still, she has enough on her plate with the kitchen staff. Meddling with the wait staff would be too much.

“Rest up a little, you’re always out of breath when you show up, and you’re always early. No wonder you always look so exhausted,” Shangela sighs. “Honestly, I worry about you, kid.”

Pearl smiles at her and lets her attend to her real duties. Soon, she can hear the sounds of Shangela rallying the kitchen staff in her own particular way, full of warmth and humour, but always focused. If Shangela left, Pearl thinks she would quit on the spot. Her presence makes it bearable to be on her feet for hours, serving food she could never afford with her budget to customers who must be treated like gods, whatever their character may be.

There’s a new face among the wait staff, and it’s about damn time. Secretly, Pearl will miss the extra hours Chantelle’s departure meant for her, but the pressure of making up for them was about to send Farrah into inpatient therapy. The new girl is a peculiar sort of beauty, with a mouth that is a tad too wide for her face and long, glossy red hair, tied back in a ponytail as per employee guidelines. Her arms seem a little bit more muscular than Pearl would have expected to see on another waitress here, where a cursory glance at the existing staff would suggest that hiring decisions are made based on how blonde and waifish the girl is. The long-sleeved white shirt of their work uniform lessens the effect of her arms somewhat, but her skirt shows off equally well-sculpted legs.

Pearl thinks she understands when she smiles, introducing herself as Kameron and holding out her hand for each of her new co-workers to shake.

***

“Can I hang fairy lights in our room?”

Pearl looks up from her book. She’s a terrible lunchtime companion, but it just happens that she takes her lunch at the same time as Trixie does on days where her friends all seem to be busy, so they usually share a table. Sometimes Trixie’s friends pop by towards the end of the break (for Pearl, Trixie will usually linger a little after she’s gone), so she’s gotten to meet Kim and Naomi, albeit briefly. Katya’s the one who keeps Trixie company in her absence most of the time.

“Uh,” Pearl says, registering the question. “I’m sorry, what did you say you want to do?”

“I want to hang fairy lights in the room,” Trixie repeats. “Maybe along the side of our bunk, but not, like, on the ladder you use or anything. I might just put them on my desk. I just wanted to ask you in case they’d bother you.”

Pearl shrugs. “I guess if they’re not crazy bright, I can live with that.”

Trixie grins. “You haven’t been sleeping in our room much lately, though. Are you cheating on me?”

“Um,” Pearl stares at her for a moment, blushing. “No?”

Somehow, she never thought the other girls would notice the shift in her sleeping arrangements. Fame has been looking like she’s dying to ask, according to Violet, but that’s not something Pearl would notice. She shouldn’t be surprised at the extent of her ignorance of anything happening in the house when it doesn’t involve her directly, yet it always hits her like a ton of bricks.

Trixie giggles. “I won’t bother prying. I know you like to keep your business to yourself. It’s a bit surprising, though.”

“Is it very obvious?” asks Pearl.

“Pearl, the walls aren’t that thick and you both live with the rest of us,” Trixie says, dryly. “I guess it’s convenient to fuck one of our housemates. And you guys are pretty quiet. I’m happy for you, I just wouldn’t have seen it coming.”

“It’s not serious,” Pearl blurts out, worried that Trixie might have assumed otherwise.

Trixie blinks slowly, and then nods.

“Alright,” she says, flipping the page of her own book. She’d adapted fairly quickly to Pearl’s lunchtime habits. “I’m thinking of shopping for the lights sometime this weekend.”

Pearl nods in acknowledgment. She can’t imagine why Trixie would waste money on that kind of thing, but she won’t object to it. Some decoration might cheer the room up a little. Ginger had her posters, and pictures from her high school theatre days, but up until now Trixie hasn’t really done anything to make her mark in the space. Pearl has been living there for much longer, and the only proof she’s ever in the room is that sometimes she leaves things on her desk for a day or two, so she has no room to criticize. But Pearl is _Pearl_ ; she knows _she’s_ like a ghost in the house, but that doesn’t mean Trixie should be the same way.

“Actually, there’s something I’d like to know,” Trixie says, her voice dropping to a whisper.

Pearl nods, waves her hand in a way she hopes will convey that she’d like Trixie to ask away. She’s in the middle of chewing on a carrot stick.

Trixie takes a deep breath. “How did you know that you… were interested in Violet? Like, in a sex kind of way?”

Pearl stops herself from spitting out her food, swallows delicately and stares back at her. Trixie immediately backtracks.

“Okay, okay, that was really invasive, you don’t have to—“

“It’s fine,” Pearl says. “I mean, it was invasive but I’m not bothered by it.”

She was only a little rattled.

“To tell you the truth, I—“

Pearl is interrupted by Katya’s arrival, bouncy and cheerful as always. Trixie turns to her like a sunflower greeting the sun. Pearl watches as Katya settles herself flush against Trixie on the bench, half sitting on her lap, while Trixie automatically extends an arm to wrap around her.

“You stink,” Trixie says, wrinkling her nose, but not going as far as to create so much as an inch of additional space between her and Katya.

Katya pinches Trixie’s cheek. “You love my natural musk. One hundred percent, pure _woman_.”

“One hundred percent, pure woman who didn’t bother showering after going to the gym.”

“How do you know I didn’t just sweat all over again on my way here?”

Pearl is mystified for a second, then shakes her head, smiling, and dips another carrot stick in her ranch. (She’s treating herself.) She turns to her reading for the day. She’d tried getting to it at the gas station during her last shift, but had been too drowsy to really absorb anything.

Her phone buzzes once, and then waits a while to buzz again when Pearl ignores it the first time. Katya and Trixie are absorbed in their banter, so Pearl allows herself a quick glance. It might be someone asking to cover a shift, something she’s known to be reliable for.

When she sees who it is, she shuts her eyes. She feels like she’s been doused in ice water. Her mother never tells her what she wants to say over text, she simply requests her presence and expects her to arrive in due time, so Pearl is caught between hope for what she wishes she would hear from her, dread for what she’s certain she will hear instead (she knows that whatever divine being ordains her fate hates her), and the desire to just ignore her altogether. Ignoring these summons has worked perfectly for her brother, so why shouldn’t she give it a go?

She realizes she’s in a daze when she notices Katya’s hand waving as close as it can get to her face from across the table.

“Hey,” Katya says, softly. “Are you okay?”

“You usually leave for class right around now,” Trixie adds.

They both watch her cautiously as she blinks, slowly coming back to earth.

“Yeah,” Pearl says, gathering herself, and then gathering her things together. “Yeah, I should get going.”

She fully intends to go to class, like nothing’s happened. But her feet take her in another direction.

***

The year or so before Pearl left home felt like living with a ticking bomb. She had assured Jordan that she would be fine without him, that there was nothing she needed protecting from before he went off to live his life away from the quiet dysfunction of their family. She wasn’t wrong in the sense that although she’d felt eyes on her for almost as long as she could remember, no one ever laid a hand on her. But it was hard to live with that sense of unease hanging in the air, and she was thankfully able to recognize signs of danger in time.

Growing up, all the adults around her seemed to notice about her was that she was beautiful. She wasn’t particularly clever, or talented in any area, so maybe that really _was_ all that could be said about her, but all that focus on her looks didn’t do much for her self-esteem. She’d wished people would say she was good at drawing, and especially wanted male family friends to stop quipping about how lucky her future husband would be, all while other girls cried into the night about how ugly they felt. Sometimes she felt guilty about it. She knew others wished they could look like her, but there she was feeling sorry for herself about how _hard_ it was to be a natural born beauty.

She’d also never felt comfortable with the idea of a husband, or even a boyfriend. Recent events have been an education in why that might have been.

She learned to recognize that look in the eyes of men, that sharp, wanting gaze. The day she saw it in her father’s was the day she realized she couldn’t remain at home longer than she could help it. Sometimes she wonders if she’d been mistaken, if she could have had an easier life had she not been so paranoid. More often than that, she wonders how close she’d cut it, how much longer she would have had to stay for the tension to snap, for something horrible to have happened to her. But she got out, and was able to breathe.

For a little while.

Pearl can hardly breathe in hospitals. The very scent of them bothers her. Ever since she left home, the hospital is the only place her mother will see her, so she has to endure it because she is not yet brave enough to defy her. She hasn’t left yet, but she’s already getting angry at herself for giving in.

She’s not sure what exactly happened. Apparently, there was an accident. She’d been going through too many different emotions at once to really listen the first time she was brought in to see her father, hooked up to all those tubes, locked in a deep sleep like a cursed princess. Before Pearl was able to feel any happiness about this, her mother began to put pressure on her to help with the costs of keeping him alive.

“We helped you out when you insisted on leaving home so early,” she said, in that flippant way of hers. Pearl can never tell if her mother really cares about anything, her voice only shows calm resentment.  “And well, Pearlie, you know how much he loves you.”

Every time she walks these halls, she hopes it will be the last. If she can’t grow a spine, this will only happen if _he_ dies. But no matter what, her mother insists on keeping him alive, even if his life consists of being a comatose vegetable.

She’s not surprised when all her mother wants is money, as always, and to make sure Pearl doesn’t forget her parents. Still, she has to blink back tears as she turns on her heel and leaves.

She doesn’t tell Violet what’s wrong, later that night. Violet is too sharp not to realize something happened, and is more tender than usual. She lets her rub her back for her, lets herself be pampered by her lover, and tries to convince herself that she deserves it. It almost scares her how attuned to her Violet can be, but it does touch her heart. Violet, who never seems to care about anyone but herself, has become one of the most tender hearted people she knows in her own special way.

She feels like she’s in danger of falling, as if she doesn’t know it’s already happened.

***

“Is this seat taken?”

Pearl shakes her head, waves for the person to take the seat next to her. She only notices that it’s Kameron when she glances blearily in her direction, catching her bearings after having dozed off. Kameron gives her a soft smile when she catches her eye, and scribbles a note on a scrap piece of paper she’s ripped out from her notebook.

_rest if you want, i can give you my notes :)_

Pearl struggles with her natural instinct to refuse even the smallest bit of help, as she can almost feel her body drifting into blissful sleep whether she wants it or not. Her pride gives in easier than usual. Violet had done plenty to make her night a little better, but as soon as she’d fallen asleep, arms wrapped protectively around Pearl, the worries she’d made her forget for a while came back with a vengeance. Pearl spent the night mentally going through how much she can possibly send to her mother, how that will impact her budget, and how she’s the biggest fool on earth for allowing this to happen to her.

She mouths a _thank you_ to Kameron, and folds her arms up on the table so she can doze off again. Kameron gently wakes her after class.

“I have a free period, so we can go to the library, if you have time,” she says. “Then you can copy them down. Or I can send you a picture.”

“Let’s go to the library,” Pearl says. She planned to go anyway.

She also makes sure to give Kameron her number, suddenly remembering she hasn’t had the chance to. Kameron lets her add her contact information with an easy smile, and Pearl lets her know she’s usually good to take a shift if she needs it.

Kameron’s notes are neatly written, but it helps to have Kameron next to her so she can ask her to elaborate on certain details she took note of without much context. There are little flowers on the margins; Kameron’s a doodler.

Kameron has a calm, patient teaching style that is much more helpful than the actual notes. Pearl hasn’t been having the best time with business analytics in general, so their little library hangout turns into an informal tutoring session. They compare schedules to see if they have any more classes together. It’s just the one, but Kameron’s help has left her feeling a little more comfortable with the material, so Pearl asks if they can meet up again sometime. She even offers to pay her, which Kameron refuses with a laugh.

“I’ll think of a way for you to repay the favour, if you really want to.”

She then excuses herself, telling Pearl that she likes to go to the gym around this time.

“I like to box,” she says, tucking her hair behind her ear and looking down bashfully.

“Cool,” says Pearl.

They hang out again at the library the week after, and Kameron seeks her out for brief conversations if they have shifts together. They seem to have the same work schedule, so Pearl isn’t sure how she’ll pay her back for the tutoring, but she likes her. She’s steady, calm, and, more importantly, hasn’t yet started to see Pearl as someone who needs to be rescued.

One day, she arrives for her shift at the restaurant to see Kameron holding a glass of water for her, like Shangela usually does.

“Shangela told me to give you this,” she says.

Pearl can only get a wink out of Shangela when she asks her about it. It makes her groan.

Nobody outside the house knows about Violet, and if she had it her way it would also be a secret to the other girls in the house. Neither of them have said anything, sure, but Pearl’s conversation about it with Trixie implied that it was still known. Katya took her aside one day to have a talk about her intentions.

“Violet hasn’t had an easy life,” she had said, without her usual levity.

Pearl saw a sudden flash of Violet, crying out as she awoke next to her, pale as a sheet in her mind’s eye. She hadn’t known what to make of that. She just nodded at Katya and excused herself.

There’s definitely _something_ between them, she knows that much. But it has to be a passing fancy for Violet, and for Pearl…

Pearl’s still on the fence about _what_ she’s finding for herself in Violet’s bed that she’d been missing. She’ll miss it when it’s gone, but she’s sure Violet isn’t taking it too seriously. Not with the way she is when it comes to sex.

When she thinks about what Shangela must have meant by making Kameron give her the water, she also thinks of Violet. Maybe she should have mentioned her. But nothing’s going to come from Shangela’s meddling, anyway.

***

Violet’s started to use her space heater, so Pearl lies on top of the covers next to a Violet burrito. It’s way too hot in the room to get under with her, but Violet insists on living in a sauna claiming she’d freeze otherwise. Pearl finds the way her little face peeks out from where she’s wrapped up in blankets adorable. She twines a finger in one of her curls. It’s practically morning, the sky’s brightening up with the sunrise outside of Violet’s window.

“Tell me about your day,” Violet says, drowsily.

Pearl nods. She’d gone to the library in the morning, covered for Farrah starting around noon, managed to get a nap before DJing for an early drag show, and finished off her day at the gas station. It’s boring stuff, but Violet smiles as she listens.

“Do you want to do something sometime? Like, go for coffee or for walks? I could even bring you something while you’re studying.”

The words themselves, and the hopeful look Violet gives her, catch Pearl off guard. Her answer gets stuck in her throat, and she can see Violet visibly deflate as she waits for a response.

“Never mind,” Violet says, burrowing farther into her cocoon. “I know you’re busy, I just thought— Never mind.”

Pearl reaches out to smooth out her hair at the top.

She sometimes thinks about what it might be like to be with Violet outside of the protective bubble of her bedroom, with the way their relationship has shifted lately. They’re fleeting images of Violet taking her by the arm to show her something in a store window near one of her usual bus stops, or occupying an empty seat next to her on the bus. Maybe Violet would rest her head on her shoulder. If she’s really out of touch with reality, she’ll see herself resting her head on Violet’s.

Those are just dreams, though. They’re safe in the bubble they’ve created, where Pearl can gently tilt her face out from where she’s hidden it under her covers so she can kiss her slowly. She can make her come, knowing it’s all that’s expected of her. As long as wanting Violet is contained to this one space, she won’t have to think of integrating it into the rest of her life.

She had thought Violet didn’t mind. For her part, Violet makes every effort to let her keep thinking that, and they move on without acknowledging what came to pass. Pearl knows she disappointed Violet, though. Sometimes she even dares to question why she did that.

***

Kameron likes to chat while she tutors her, so Pearl gets to know her a little through their weekly sessions. She tells her about how she took a year off to travel, that she picked up her job at the restaurant to try and make up for the expense. Fitness is important to her, and she hopes to one day own a gym.

“I want to create a safe space for people to achieve their fitness goals,” Kameron says, quiet yet sure of herself. “And to have fun, of course.”

Pearl wishes she could be so carefree. She can’t ignore the envy she feels when Kameron shows off her travel photos, and at the passion which with she works towards her future. As much as she appreciates her help, and her company, Pearl has to nip any unkind feelings she might develop about Kameron’s more fortunate circumstances in the bud.

When Kameton bemoans her lack of Friday night plans, Pearl mentions that she’s spinning for a pretty big party at Gina Machina that night.

“I can get you a drink,” she says. “If you’ll take that as payment for teaching me.”

Kameron beams and nods enthusiastically. “That will do just fine!”

***

Pearl swears she’s sat at the exact same stool she sat at that night, when Violet was at the club, and Kameron is now taking Violet’s place. She shakes the memory out of her mind.

Kameron ordered some brightly coloured cocktail, paid for with one of Pearl’s drink tickets, and because she’s got a few minutes to go before she’s needed, Pearl is keeping her company.

“I expected it to be a little more  _alternative_ here,” Kameron says.

Pearl laughs. “Everyone does. Can’t imagine why.”

She winks, and Kameron laughs. _She laughs so easily,_ Pearl thinks.

Kameron has chosen a pink, slinky dress, showing off her heavily tattooed arms. She explains that she touches up the area around her hands with concealer and lets her work shirt cover the rest at the restaurant. Pearl has only ever seen her in their work uniform, and the comfortable workout clothes she usually wears to school. She’s also let her hair down; she looks like a red haired, buff version of Barbie.

Once again, she’s found herself at the bar counter with a gorgeous woman. She wouldn’t dare take advantage of it, though, not this time.

“I’m sorry I can’t hang out all night,” says Pearl. “If you want to sneak out early, I wouldn’t be mad.”

Kameron smiles warmly, shaking her head. “Nah, I’ll stick around. I want to dance with you.”

Pearl releases the most awkward laugh she’s ever laughed in her life.

She’s hyper aware of Kameron’s presence as she does her set. She doesn’t have a shortage of dance partners as the night goes on, and she politely accepts each of them, along with the drinks they press into her hand. But her eyes, and her smiles, are directed at Pearl.

God, she doesn’t deserve it. Especially when she imagines another girl’s dark eyes, and her wicked smirk, every time she meets hers. Pearl thanks the heavens she’s mastered the art of performing on autopilot.

She has to apologize to Kameron again at the end of the night, when all she can do is walk outside with her and wait until she’s safe in an Uber.

“I’m not much of a dancer, though, so it was probably for the best,” she says, unable to meet Kameron’s eye.

How Kameron can remain so warm towards her is a mystery, but she brushes her apology off. Maybe it’s the alcohol that does it.

“You looked so cool up there,” she says.

Her face is a little flushed. Pearl would have wanted her to be somewhere else, in the arms of someone who would appreciate her beauty, and her kindness.

“Are—Are you getting a ride, or—”

Kameron staggers closer. Pearl knows what’s coming. Instead of shoving her away, like she probably should have, she shuts her eyes and lips tightly when Kameron kisses her.

The hurt and confusion in Kameron’s face is almost too much to bear.

“I’m so sorry,” Pearl whispers.

Kameron just nods, turning away. They wait in silence, until Kameron is safely ensconced in her ride home.

***

Violet has fallen asleep watching some documentary on Netflix. At first, Pearl settles down next to her, sitting in the events of the night, indulging in her usual self-flagellation. She decides to wake her when she realizes it might be best to move Violet to bed.

“You’re home,” Violet mumbles, extending her arms so that Pearl can help lift her off the couch. She’s drowning in a giant hoodie Pearl hasn’t seen on her before. She’s probably had it for a while.

Pearl walks Violet down the familiar steps to her room, lets her stretch out on her bed. She regards Violet, as she presses a finger to her bandaged hand.

“It’s gonna rot,” she says.

Pearl knows there are tears welling up in her eyes. She doesn’t bother blinking them back, as she leans down to press a chaste kiss on Violet’s lips. It hurts her to pull away, she wants nothing more than to cover her up with her body. She thinks back to that pantomime of a kiss she shared with Kameron.

She knows what she needs to do.

“Violet,” she says, choking on her name. “We have to stop doing this.”

 


	5. armistice

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> changed things up pov-wise again. i plan to write the next couple of chapters like this until i feel i can build a full pov chapter for our final girl. but i think it’s time to start building some momentum, plot wise, and a less laser-focused pov will let me check in with everyone as needed. i don’t really know what i’m going on about, just scroll past my crazy.
> 
> as always, thank you all for your undying support. it keeps this crazy train chugging.

Fame is the first to sound the alarm.

“Have you guys seen Violet lately?”

Katya stops doodling on the margins of Trixie’s psych notes to look at her. Trixie interrupts her reading to shake her head. They’re seated next to each other at the kitchen table.

“No, we haven’t,” Katya responds. “Is something wrong?”

Fame shakes her head, but toys with her anniversary ring. It’s a nervous habit she’s picked up.

“I don’t know for sure, but I haven’t seen her since Friday. Pearl, do you know if she’s been in since?”

Pearl, caught staggering out of her own room for once, stands stock still as three pairs of eyes fix on her.

“I— I haven’t either,” she mumbles, bashfully fixing her eyes on her feet.

Fame lets out a tiny gasp.

“Oh my God,” she says, breathing rapidly. “And no one’s tried to contact her?”

Trixie and Katya look at each other, sheepishly. Pearl is still staring at her feet.

“I’ll text her,” Fame says, firmly. “Don’t worry, I can do that much. It’s just that with what she does…”

They let the implications of that hang in the air.

Officially stressed out since voicing her worries, Fame’s nervous energy only increases with each unanswered text. Katya, being an emotional sponge, soon takes that into herself and multiplies it tenfold.

Having grown attuned to Katya’s feelings, almost to the point where she sometimes thinks she can sense them even when they’re apart (how _ridiculous_ ), Trixie takes her aside to check in with her after another day has passed. That opens the floodgates.

“I said something to Pearl, you know,” she says, pacing the small length of Trixie and Pearl’s room while Trixie is perched on her bed, watching. This started as soon as Katya voiced her nagging worries, and Trixie wants to hold her still, but knows that might just make her more restless. “About being nice to Violet. And I think, maybe, that scared her a little? I mean, I just wanted to look out for Violet, no one else does, but I should have just left them alone. It wasn’t my business.”

“Katya,” Trixie says, gently. “Do you think this is your fault?”

That stops her for a moment.

“No,” says Katya. She sits down next to Trixie. One of her legs starts to shake.

“No, of course not, that would be crazy. Am I crazy?”

Trixie turns to face her, nudging her hands to a spot where Katya can hold on to them if she needs to. Katya notices, and grabs on.

“You’re not crazy,” says Trixie. “You just care a lot.”

Katya smiles, not one of those brilliant, toothy grins Trixie loves, but Trixie’s not really picky when it comes to making her smile. She’ll take this.

They stay that way, fingers entwined, eyes locked, for some time. Trixie doesn’t realize that she’s slowly inching her face forward. Katya feels her face heat up a little. Trixie wants to ask her what colour her eyes are, a question that she’s been mulling over at random moments, when her mind goes slack. It’s not appropriate for the situation, and that thought snaps Trixie out of her trance before their noses touch.

Katya feels a little bit disappointed, an emotion that intermingles with the mess of feelings she’s been cycling through lately.

“I tried texting her,” says Trixie.

“Me too,” says Katya.

Pearl finds herself coming home, and heading to Violet’s room like she used to. She alone hasn’t tried to reach out. What she has done is curl up on Violet’s bed and reflect on the last time she was there, when she ended their little affair. Violet had coldly asked her to leave. Her heart clenches at the thought that this might be her last memory of her.

Every time she tries to send her a message, she gets too tangled up in her guilt to get a single word out. She wants to say she’s sorry. Sometimes she thinks she could even tell Violet she cares about her, that she should tell her she just doesn’t deserve her tenderness. Especially now that she’s hurt her. At least she should ask if she’s okay. But she doesn’t think Violet would accept any of that.

Pearl can’t face the other girls, but Fame refuses to be ignored. The more worried she gets, the more she begins to lavish attention on her remaining housemates. Taking care of them helps her feel a little better. She had composed a series of messages meant as an apology to Violet for anything she might have done to upset her, because when she looks back at her recent behaviour, she knows she could have done better. She didn’t send any of them, though.

It feels like they’ve been holding a collective breath for weeks, but it’s only a day before they each receive a message from Violet’s phone.

Trixie is with Pearl when she gets hers, and reads it aloud so that she knows.

“My name is Alyssa Edwards, and I am writing to let y’all know that your friend is safe. She’s been staying with me for a couple of days, and I’ll be letting her know how much y’all miss her. I’ve been taking very good care of her, so there’s no need to worry.”

***

Alyssa sighs, handing Violet her phone.

“Change your passcode, it’s too obvious,” she says. “I put your birthday in and it unlocked right away.”

“Doesn’t everyone use their birthday?”

Violet unlocks her phone to try and figure out what Alyssa must have been doing, digging around in it. When she arrived, she’d put her phone down somewhere and hadn’t looked at it since. Now, Alyssa’s getting on her case about how secure it is. _Nosy old broad_ , she thinks, with affection.

“Yes! So anyone could guess yours, if they know it,” Alyssa says, her face expressing more emotion than necessary.

Violet smirks. “And I’m clearly known for sharing all my personal information.”

Alyssa tuts at that. “You know the internet’s a thing. Everything’s on that bitch, even the results of my last colonoscopy are probably on there.”

Violet grimaces.

“Gross, Mom,” she says.

“I hope you can still find it in you to laugh at me when Russian spies are unlocking your phone,” says Alyssa. “Anyway, I just answered all your texts. You had a lot of people wanting to know if you’d died. Even someone called _Fame_... what’s with that?”

“It’s actually Melissa,” says Violet. “She likes to go by Miss Fame. She’s an Instagram celebrity, so she’s a little out there.”

“What’s an Instagram?”

Violet has no idea how it has taken this long for Alyssa to learn the wonders of Instagram. She takes it upon herself to teach her, and is treated to the experience of watching a woman find the love of her life.

Laganja comes home to Alyssa fully immersed in uploading endless pictures of herself onto the app. There are hats and necklaces strewn around her, and she’s gone through a couple of outfit changes while Violet looks on with amusement.

Laganja just groans.

“We’re going to starve now, mama. She’s lost to us.”

Violet shrugs.

Although she had been given a key to Valentina’s apartment, Violet chose to impose on Alyssa. Sometimes a girl has to admit she needs her mother, and Alyssa’s the closest thing Violet has at this point in her life. She’s been a fixture on her couch since she woke up with puffy eyes after Pearl broke things off with her, only rising to eat or to tend to her clients. Even if her heart’s been broken, Violet can use the money, and Alyssa will neither tolerate Violet eating on the couch or not eating at all.

Laganja has commandeered the guest room since the start of her acquaintance with Alyssa, and Gia’s battles with her current place of residence have led to her practically moving in as well. The two of them share the bedroom, and, more than likely, the bed. At first, after basking in Alyssa’s hugs and vows to murder whoever had hurt her, the high drama of being cooped up with these three divas was hard on Violet, but she’s found that it distracted her from her emotions well enough to be worthwhile.

She wishes she’d never kissed Pearl. She’s tried to hate her, but she let her heart get so soft she’s finding it impossible to commit to that. She doesn’t see herself as the type to spend days crying and wishing a girl would take her back, as if things had gotten so serious she’d have something significant to return to. It’s a difficult way to think when she was so distraught about Pearl not wanting to fuck her anymore, she practically ran away from home so she wouldn’t have to see her face, or suffer the embarrassment of crying in front of the other girls. At one point, she even scrolled through ads for a new room to rent out, or even an apartment of her own. Somehow she couldn’t find a single one she liked better than the one she already has, the one she really should return to soon. She’d given Ru all her rent cheques for the year up front anyway, back in January.

She didn’t expect anyone to bother reaching out to her. Well, maybe it would make sense for Katya to do so, but when she goes through all of Fame’s frantic texts she feels a twinge of guilt for not thinking of her feelings. It also makes her smile a little. It’s nice to have tangible proof that Fame still cares.

Alyssa is knocked out of her trance when Gia comes home with some fried chicken. By the time dinner’s over, Violet decides she’s ready to go home.

She stays until the next evening, and comes home to a furious Fame.

“You bitch!” Fame shrieks, pulling her into a tight hug. “We thought something had happened to you! If you _ever_ do something like that again, I’ll kill you myself!”

There are tears in Fame’s eyes, and Violet feels herself start to cry too. They hold each other close, friends again after almost a month.

***

They start the month of October with a clean slate. Or, well, clean enough that the house is once again at peace. Violet and Pearl may not be speaking, but Pearl has never had to work too hard to avoid her housemates. Everyone comes to a silent agreement on the matter, and whatever took place between the two of them is left unacknowledged.

Fame balances dating, school, her brand, refusing to have deep discussions about the health of her relationship, and fretting about whether or not they should get a head start on some kind of autumnal concept for the house. The year before, no one had been enthusiastic about decorations, so by the time Halloween rolled around the overall look of the house was disappointing. Fame believes that they can do better, and Katya at least is happy to help.

“I have lots of guilt money from my dad,” she chirps. “We can have a smoke machine and everything.”

Trixie approaches every midterm with the seriousness of a person preparing to defuse a bomb, and does not show much enthusiasm about this project. She’s put up her fairy lights and has had enough of home decor for the time being. Violet might grudgingly help out so that Fame will stop nagging, but she’s holding out a little longer. Pearl is never home.

Fame busies herself with the great question of whether it makes more sense to do a generic autumn concept that can carry them through November, or if they should hone in on Halloween as their great inspiration.

“Of course we should just deck the house out for Halloween,” Violet says, primly. “We’re already being haunted. The kids will love it.”

Fame glares and tosses a kernel of popcorn at her. She’s been chipping away at a family sized bag of the white cheddar kind while she works on some sort of sketch. Violet had laughed at her when she shoved it aside so it would not be in frame when she took a picture of her workspace, for her fans.

Katya takes some time out of her studies to groan.

“Of all the inside jokes I could have generated,” she wails, dramatically. “Why did you guys latch onto that one? I have better material!”

It’s not that anyone seriously believes there’s a ghost in the house. Katya practically called a house meeting to make sure everyone understood that it was a stupid remark, and that she wasn’t trying to imply that the house was haunted. She did this a good three weeks after she had mentioned the ghost in the first place, but as confusing as it was to have her apologize for ancient history, the message was heard. Fame going around talking about it after Katya first spoke it into the universe, though, extended its stay in their consciousness longer than it might have otherwise.

It started off as a joke, and the girls like to say that it’s stayed that way. If Trixie yells about her delicious baking disappearing overnight, the ghost is to blame. Now that Fame’s borrowing Violet’s clothes again, their disappearance from Violet’s closet is explained by way of ghost. Because no one around her will let it die, at least not permanently, Katya has claimed that it woke her up late at night and told her that week’s winning lottery numbers so she could join in the fun as well. She went on not to win the Powerball in spite of this supernatural intervention, and everyone had a nice chuckle.

Katya still likes to complain that it’s probably the stupidest thing she’s said out of a whole host of stupid things, and that it should just be allowed to rest in peace so they can move on to another stupid house joke.

“Maybe we should call an exorcist,” suggests Trixie, in one such instance. Katya wheezes with laughter, because Trixie’s the one who said it, so she acknowledges the remark as a wise observation.

When Trixie has a moment with Pearl, she tries to ask her how she’s doing. Pearl always says she’s fine, but Trixie thinks it’s important to ask.

***

Fame comes home in tears one night.

Katya raps on Trixie and Pearl’s door in distress.

“I think she got dumped,” she whispers, so that the sound of her voice doesn’t pass through the thin walls.

She’s curled up next to Trixie, comforted by her body heat. It feels a little wrong to be so cozy while Fame’s world is shattering around her, but try as she might, Katya wasn’t able to help her. Staying in their shared room was putting her in quite a state.

When Fame emerges from their room later that night, she’s bundled into a blanket and sat down on the couch while Violet strokes her hair. Violet coaxes her to let her rub some cold cream on her face, to get at whatever bits of makeup she hadn’t cried off. She lets Fame use her bedroom, and spends the night filling Katya in on what she managed to get out of Fame about how it happened.

“He took her to her favourite dessert place,” she says, scowling. “And did the whole ‘you’re so much better than me so I’m basically doing you a favour’ thing.”

“Fuck,” says Katya.

“He’s right, but still. Finally making an effort just to dump her,” Violet sighs. “We should key his car.”

“He doesn’t have one.”

“Of _course_ he doesn’t have one.”

The peace of early autumn, as nice as it had been while it lasted, has come to an end. Fame, the emotional thermostat, settles into a depression that dampens the overall mood of the house once more.

***

When there’s a problem, Katya feels like it’s her sworn duty to fix it. She’s all too conscious of the fact that she can’t reliably do this, she’s enough of a mess on her own, but she still feels like the weight of the world is hers to bear. Through hard work, and a smattering of professional help, she believed she’d come to accept her shortcomings, but she guesses she started patting herself on the back too soon. All that time spent trying to rewire her mind into a more functional organ was a waste, since her brain insists on climbing back onto its old bullshit even after having crashed on her not too long ago. It’s easier to divert a river’s course than to change her nature.

Fame is like a sister to her. Therefore, Fame’s sadness is also her sadness. It breaks her heart to watch her shuffle around the house like a zombie, barely capable of doing her makeup or fussing over the other girls like she loves doing. There’s no more talk about decorating the house. Katya’s attempts to bring it up, hoping it will distract her, only got Fame to shrug and tell her she should do what she wants.

“You know,” she says to Trixie, as they share a moment at school. “Maybe you were onto something when you said we needed an exorcism.”

Trixie blinks bemusedly.

“Why are you complimenting me so early in the morning?”

It’s around 11AM. Katya doesn’t pick on her for that while the gears in her mind spin.

“Maybe if we bring some new life into the house,” she explains. “It can… help make things better.”

Trixie regards her thoughtfully. Her first instinct is to try and coax Katya away from this line of thinking. She’s gotten to know her well enough, though, that as impossible as it is for Katya to become the superhero who solves all the world’s evils, she knows it won’t stop her from trying.

“Is it time for us to adopt our child?” she asks, aiming to at least make her giggle.

Katya does laugh a little.

“No, I’m not ready for that,” she says.

“Do you need help coming up with another plan, then?”

Trixie waits while Katya considers her question. God, her _eyes_ … She still can’t quite figure out if they’re blue or green, and she’s not sure if she really needs to know. She’s enchanted either way. But she wants to ask her about them.

Katya’s the last girl in the world she should worry about scaring with a weird question, she could probably come up with something weirder herself. It feels a little _too_ weird, though, to spring that on her out of the blue. Or out of the green, maybe. Trixie Mattel is an _idiot_.

“No,” Katya says, finally, eyes twinkling. “Ask me about my plan.”

Trixie clears her throat.

“What is your plan, o wise one?”

Katya gives her a beauteous smile, basking in the all too temporary sensation of calm that comes with having a strategy.

“We should have a party.”


	6. preparations

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i encourage you guys to make bets on whether or not i’ll get the halloween party chapter up before the new year. christmas should arrive in february. 
> 
> i hope this chapter is charming!

Someone’s knocking on the door.

Fame sighs.

“Katya, you know you can be in here whenever you want,” she calls out.

Fame loves Katya, she really does, but it doesn’t help her to be worried about how Katya is too afraid of upsetting her to be in her own room. She’s so considerate, it’s painful. Fame wants to convince her, and the rest of the girls, that she’s okay, that she just needs to be _alone_ for a little while, to get used to it.

“Um, actually, it’s not Katya,” answers a timid voice on the other side of the door. “She’s busy cuddling her girlfriend. They won’t let me snuggle, so I hoped you’d let me hang out with you for a bit.”

Fame rises from her bed, ties her hair up before opening the door a crack.

“Oh,” she says. “Hey, Kim.”

Since their first meeting, Kim has commented on her posts more often, and Fame has usually been quick to respond. She’s thought about messaging her, and did send her a line thanking her for the nice afternoon they spent with Trixie, but otherwise they haven’t spoken beyond exchanging comments.

Fame guesses she’s just been preoccupied with life, and honestly feeling a little shy at the thought of reaching out to Kim. She can’t imagine why she’s been so timid, when Kim’s been nothing but nice to her.

Kim gives her a sweet, closed-mouth smile.

“Can I come in?”

Fame opens the door all the way and gestures for her to go ahead. Kim stands with her hands clasped in front of her while Fame pulls the chair she uses for her makeup station, so that Kim can sit. She settles herself on the edge of her bed, posture straight. She’s not willing to be as sloppy as she wants now that she has company.

“So, Trixie and Katya are… girlfriends? Finally?”

Normally, this would be thrilling news, but she feels so dull that there’s not much excitement in her voice. She’s lost her touch.

Kim shakes her head.

“Oh, no,” she replies. “I bet they’ll be 85 and at a nursing home when they get their shit together, at this rate. I still feel like I’m in the middle of something when I’m around them, though.”

Fame makes a small sound, to show that she heard her. She plasters a smile on her face.

Kim looks at her softly, like a sympathetic cloud of cotton candy. She’s not in her full regalia; Fame has just learned that Kim Chi actually owns a hoodie, and is not, in fact, dressed like a fairy princess every single day of her life. Her makeup is as minimal as Fame’s ever seen it. She likes her slim little nose.

“Does your hair curl naturally?”

Kim’s fluffy hair bounces a little when she shakes her head.

“It’s a perm,” she says. “I regret it immensely.”

Fame should have known that. It does look a bit like the killer daughter’s from _Legally Blonde_. Kim wouldn’t hurt a soul, though. Fame can tell she’s kind by looking at her. She believes in her intuition even when people say she’s ridiculous for being so trusting.

She’s been telling herself that just because Aaron broke up with her, that doesn’t make her an idiot for having believed the best of him and ended up miserable. It’s been difficult to quiet that thought. Everyone she’s close to, namely her housemates, insist that there’s something wrong with _him_ for having done what he did, but people usually choose to break up when there’s something wrong with the other person, don’t they?

She can’t spin the situation into one that favours her. Either she’s a fool for trusting someone who would only hurt her, or Aaron is just distancing himself from a worthless girl.

She realizes she’s gone quiet for too long.

“It looks nice.”

Kim thanks her, studying her for a moment.

“You haven’t updated your Insta in a while,” she says. “I’ve missed your posts.”

Fame hasn’t even checked up on the toll her inactivity has taken with her follower count.

“I haven’t even been on the app,” she admits.

Kim has a calming energy, and is kind enough not to imply in her actions or words that one of their mutual friends has filled her in on the recent events in Fame’s life. She just tells her that she can message her whenever she wants.

“You could even get my number from Trix and, like, breathe heavily at me over the phone,” she says. “I’m really chill. But I always check my messages.”

Fame assures her that she knows where to find her.

With a sudden case of the jitterbgs, Kim excuses herself and moves to scurry out. She mumbles about how Trixie and Katya might be scissoring or something, and she needs to be there to ruin the mood.

Fame calls out to her with one last question.

“Did Trixie already invite you to the party?”

Kim peeks in at Fame from the other side of the door, having heard her just as she was about to shut it behind her. She nods in the affirmative.

Fame tells her she hopes she’ll pay her another visit then.

***

Though it grieves Fame to think that Katya has been sleeping on the couch to give her the space she craves, that’s not what’s been happening at all. Violet had scooped her off the couch and into her care out of pity when she tried, and she has since been spending her nights with either Violet or Trixie.

Violet loves Katya dearly, but complains that she tends to spread her limbs out like a starfish in her sleep, taking up more space than such a relatively small person should. Trixie counters that if you fold her into yourself, she sleeps very well, and there’s space enough for everyone.

“She’s really warm, too,” Trixie adds, as she fills Kim in on her new sleeping arrangements.

Kim’s eyebrows have now bonded to her hairline.

“Are you getting married anytime soon?”

Pearl remains as silent as the grave, but her eyes lock with Kim’s in a knowing glance.

Trixie purses her lips. They’re supposed to be sharing a _peaceful_ lunch.

“We’re just friends,” she says. “Katya’s very affectionate.”

“You hate hugs,” Kim points out.

“I can get used to anything, Kimberly.”

Pearl focuses on her salad. If her policy wasn’t to mind her own business, she would point out that seeing Trixie and Katya together without some level of physical contact between the two of them is a rare thing.

She keeps her mouth shut about that and eats her kale while Kim teases Trixie.

“Are you sure you won’t be joining us?”

Pearl takes a moment to realize she’s being spoken to.

“For the party, I mean,” Trixie continues, now with her attention. “Violet’s getting a friend to help us remodel the house and everything.”

Pearl shakes her head.

“I don’t really go to parties,” she says.

Kim begins to grills Trixie on the party decorations, astonished at the implications that they’re going full _Extreme Makeover: Home Edition_ for a Halloween bash. Trixie explains that while it isn’t that extreme, Violet’s friend has been telling anyone who will listen that the half wall separating the kitchen from the living room is unnecessary and needs to go.

“Also, they’re seriously considering bringing in a smoke machine,” Trixie says. “We really could change everything, and then cover it all up in smoke.”

“That’s so much...”

***

Later that day, Detox tuts at Pearl over her refusal to even try attending a party at her own house.

“If it’s really a party, you’ll be able to pop in after your shift,” she says, as she unwraps her bandage for her at long last. “I know you won’t listen, because you never do, but I’ve known you since you moved into Ru’s and I’ve never seen you have a second of fun.”

Detox used to have the single room before Violet came along, and was the one to hook her up with her DJ gigs. Pearl had gone out of her way to talk to her because there was something strangely exciting about having a drag queen in the house. She’d wanted to know everything about Detox, and Detox gladly took her under her wing.

Pearl looks away as the bandaging is peeled off her hand. She pouts a little.

“I’ve had fun,” she mumbles, sulkily. “And some irresponsible sex, too.”

She should have known Detox would find a way to lecture her about not wasting enough time. Technically she’s not lying; Violet was fun.

Still, it’s been ages since Pearl and Detox last saw each other, and, prodding aside, it’s a nice reunion. Detox has become a modestly successful EDM artist over the past year, and she spends so little time in Boston nowadays that she’s started hinting to Pearl that she can move into her place whenever she wants. Even now, Pearl hasn’t thought of that as a serious option, but she does grudgingly accept money to go in and check up on Detox’s plants every once in a while. They’re cacti, so they’re usually doing alright.

“Think you’ll tell me about it anytime soon? I would love to know what _fun_ looks like for you, now that you’re bringing up irresponsible sex.”

Detox pauses unraveling the bandage for a moment, to emphasize that it’s a serious question.

Pearl shrugs.

“It was stupid fun. You would have been proud.”

Detox nods and undoes the last of her bandages.

“You can look now.”

Pearl gingerly turns her head.

Detox sighs.

“Good as new,” she says, gently.

Her hand is fine.

Detox leaves her to dispose of the bandages.

***

Alyssa taps her foot on the hardwood floor as she surveys the house’s common area, pouting as she does when deep in thought, her arms crossed in front of her chest. Small as she is, her hair reaches proudly for the ceiling and just about makes her a head taller. Her face is painted a touch more than is necessary for 3PM. There’s a mirror hanging by the doorway, and Alyssa has selected a spot where she can turn to it when she misses the sight of her own face, but still have a decent view of the living room and kitchen.

Every time she encounters her, Katya tries to come up with elaborate ways to propose to her. She figures that’s the only way she’d clinch the deal.

“Miss Katya,” Alyssa says. “I know you already know this about me, but I really hate that fucking wall.”

“Miss Alyssa,” Katya replies. “You know I’d do just about anything for you. But we’re not allowed to tear down the walls, and I think most of us want to see our rental deposits again someday.”

“It would make the space look bigger if you could.”

“Sadly, our landlady would not appreciate it. And she’s currently on a ranch somewhere in the Midwest. We have been instructed to contact her friend Latrice if we need anything.”

“Maybe if we _bribe_ this Latrice with something…”

“Latrice Royale,” Katya says, gravely. “Is too principled to take bribes. I tried to get her to overlook that time we got a noise complaint because I accidentally invited the entire faculty of engineering over for a rager on her watch. She would not let us off without a stern talking to. We almost died of shame. She would probably scold us for trying to bribe her, and I don’t think my soul could handle that again.”

“Hmm.”

“Also someone tried bribing the cop with ecstasy…”

Alyssa makes a gesture to shut her down.

“Okay,” she says. “We’ll have to leave the wall, then.”

Katya mentally thanks her. She’d been painfully close to recounting how _she_ was the one who called in the noise complaint in the first place, because everything had gotten too big, too fast for her to handle. Ginger had told her she could have just asked _her_ to yell at everyone, if she’d wanted them gone.

“You didn’t have to bring in law enforcement,” she’d said, rubbing her back as she shook her head at Katya’s idiocy.

That was the last time she’d tried to host a party, and she really hopes _this_ one will go better. She’s confident, though, that she’s learned her lesson: no engineers. They’re fucking _crazy_.

Well, maybe _one_ engineer. She wrangled a pinky promise out of Alaska the last time they met up at the Paint Away the Stress! Therapeutic Art Group they both attend regularly, that she wouldn’t bring everyone she knows in exchange for being invited to their shindig.

“Though if you know any cute, sweet boys a nice angel of a girl might like, you can bring a plus one,” she’d whispered, over the ambient nature sounds wafting through the room from a small boom box. Katya always has to physically prevent herself from stealing that thing.

When she steps off that train of thought, she turns back to Alyssa.

“Are you sure you don’t want to come?”

Alyssa shakes her head firmly.

“I have to look after my business,” she says. “My girls will tell me how it went.”

Katya is dying to meet these girls.

“But I need _you_ tell me something,” Alyssa says, seriously, pointing a lacquered nail straight at her. “We’re getting the smoke machine, right?”

Katya stares back, incredulous at the thought that Alyssa would doubt her.

“Of course!”

***

Kameron waits by her locker with a glass of water.

Pearl hadn’t spoken to her at school, and had done her best to keep their interactions to a minimum at work. Kameron hadn’t made an effort to reach out either, and the way things were between them had added a weight to Pearl’s chest since that night at the club.

She braces herself for whatever Kameron wants to talk about. Kameron snorts when she catches it.

“Come on, now,” she says. “I’m not trying to kill you.”

Pearl nods, taking the glass from her.

“Did Shangela ask you to do this?”

Kameron shakes her head. Pearl notices that the corners of her lips are turned up into the ghost of a smile.

“I wanted to talk to you,” she says. She patiently waits for Pearl to look her in the eye, and sighs when Pearl sips her water, avoiding her gaze.

“You don’t have to avoid me.”

Pearl meets her eyes then.

“I’m not—”

Kameron laughs.

“You are. Honestly, I haven’t been trying all that hard to get your attention either, but you won’t even look at me nowadays.”

She pauses, biting her lip.

“If you’re staying away because you think I’m upset with you, I want you to know that I’m not. I was hurt, yes, but if you really don’t feel that way about me, I wouldn’t want you to humour me.”

Pearl glances down at her scuffed-up shoes. She takes a mental note to ask Shangie if she has any more of that black stuff, to make them look a little more presentable.

“I’m sorry that you were hurt,” she says, finally.

When she tilts her head back up to look at Kameron, the warmth she used to see in her eyes when they were together has returned.

“Don’t worry about it,” she says. “I’m sorry I went in for that kiss the way I did. If you don’t want to speak to me again because of that, I understand.”

Pearl smiles at her, trying to convey that she holds no ill will towards her. She drinks more of her water. They still have a couple of minutes to chat before work begins in earnest. They spend some of it in companionate silence.

“Hey,” Kameron says. “Did you do okay in the last midterm?”

Pearl shrugs.

“A little better than before, but that’s just because a lot of what you taught me was on it.”

Kameron blushes, then shakes her head sharply.

“If you can stand to be in a room with me again, I’d be happy to help you get through the rest of the term,” she offers. “Nothing in return this time.”

Pearl hesitates to agree. She _has_ been doing a little better by going off of the help she received from Kameron earlier, so she could say she thinks she has a strong base to jump off of.

But it was nice to study with someone, and some of the weight from the way their budding friendship seemed to break has lifted from her chest now that she knows there are no hard feelings.

“I missed my study buddy,” she says.

***

When Blair offers to help her with her roots, Fame just about loses it. She holds herself together as she shakily, but politely refuses.

“I can come over to yours,” Blair offers. “I know it might be awkward to come around, though my brother doesn’t live at home…”

Blair is a sweetheart. Fame liked her from the first day they started school together, and they had been very close for a time. Then she introduced her to her older brother and… _God_ , she really has been an asshole, neglecting her friends for what she thought was the romance of the ages.

She shakes her head.

“I want to fix it myself,” she says.

Blair lets it drop. She looks like a porcelain doll. Aaron is a little delicate-looking too, but Blair is like a girl in a storybook illustration. Fame remembers staring at her when they first met, trying to think of which Disney princess she resembled the most. It embarrasses her to think about it.

“I’m sorry about my asshole brother,” she says.

“He’s not an asshole,” Fame says, the words tumbling out like a reflex.

Blair bites her lip, looks down at her clasped hands in front of her.

“Text me if you ever want to talk,” she says, and scampers away. They have another class in about 20 minutes, but Fame lingers, and finds a bathroom where she can take a look at herself.

 _Oof_.

Her roots are the worst they’ve been in two years. If Blair hadn’t said anything she would have probably carried on this way until they grew in fully. The harsh bathroom light does nothing to soften the effect.

Her eyes burn with tears, and she’s had enough of herself, quite frankly.

Halloween is her favourite holiday. Even when she was unattractive, she could dress up and leave herself in this time of year. She used to love coming up with costumes, even if all she did was sit by the door with a bowl of candy, waiting for the children to arrive. She can feel a storm cloud hovering above her throughout the last class of her day.

Why shouldn’t she enjoy her favourite holiday? Why should she let herself go, walk around with roots almost down to her cheekbones and not even notice?

 _Melissa, you are being utterly ridiculous_.

She chuckles aloud, drawing stares in the middle of class. For some reason, the voice in her head sounded an awful lot like Violet.

Maybe Fame should have listened to her. It would definitely help her feel better if she could come around to Violet’s line of thinking, see the devil personified in Aaron and herself as entirely blameless for her own misery. She can’t convince herself of that, but just because she’s at fault for her own misfortune doesn’t mean she can’t do some _fucking_ root touch ups.

She heads to Party City after class. Usually, she puts a little more thought into her costume, and what she chooses is probably not the most inspired. It doesn’t matter.

For weeks, she sat in her feelings while her housemates planned a party. Katya had shyly told her it would mean the world for her to make an appearance. Wrapped up in her sheets, she had kindly, but firmly told her that she had no intention of attending.

Maybe if she tries, she can at least stop neglecting her friends. It might be good for her. It _will_ be good for her.

She buys a costume, the cheap kind that comes in a bag, and a wig to wear with it. It sits on her lap as she rides the bus home. By the time she’s made it to the door, the empty feeling inside of her has started to creep back.

It’s Friday, and the party’s tomorrow.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Come see me on tumblr: [@sayakamagika](http://sayakamagika.tumblr.com/)


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